Consumption and the Effect on our Societies By one calculation, there are now more than 1.7 billion members of “the consumer class”—nearly half of them in the developing world. A lifestyle and culture that became common in Europe, North America, Japan, and a few other pockets of the world in the twentieth century is going global in the twenty-first.
Worldwide, private consumption expenditures—the amount spent on goods and services at the household level—topped $20 trillion in 2000, a four-fold increase over 1960 (in 1995 dollars).
As incomes rise, people are gaining access to a multitude of consumer items associated with greater prosperity:
What does the knowledge of our access to these goods and consumption of them hold in store for us?
A growing share of the global consumer class now lives in developing countries. China and India alone claim more than 20 percent of the global total—with a combined consumer class of 360 million, more than in all of Western Europe. (Though the average Chinese or Indian person consumes substantially less than the average European.)
Developing countries also have the greatest potential to expand the ranks of consumers. China and India’s large consumer base represents only 16 percent of the region’s population, whereas in Europe the figure is 89 percent. In most developing countries the consumer class accounts for less than half of the population—suggesting considerable room to grow.
While the consumer class thrives, great disparities remain. The 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only around 3 percent.
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report "New York Times" -- -- WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.
As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.
The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.
"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."
Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.
What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.
The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.
Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality.
Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.
This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.
The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.
Hey we don't need court orders for wiretaps because we listen to absolutely EVERYTHING.The agency that could be big brotherDEEP in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.
Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country.
A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the N.S.A. has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the N.S.A. to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment.
According to John E. McLaughlin, who as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the fall of 2001 was among the first briefed on the program, this eavesdropping was the most secret operation in the entire intelligence network, complete with its own code word - which itself is secret.
Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste JAKARTA, Indonesia - The closest most people will ever get to remote Papua, or the operations of Freeport-McMoRan, is a computer tour using Google Earth to swoop down over the rain forests and glacier-capped mountains where the American company mines the world's largest gold reserve.
With a few taps on a keyboard, satellite images quickly reveal the deepening spiral that Freeport has bored out of its Grasberg mine as it pursues a virtually bottomless store of gold hidden inside. They also show a spreading soot-colored bruise of almost a billion tons of mine waste that the New Orleans-based company has dumped directly into a jungle river of what had been one of the world's last untouched landscapes.
Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons The tragic irony of the 21st century is that just as faith in technology collapsed on the world's stock markets in 2000, it came to power in the White House and Pentagon. For the Project for a New American Century's ambition of "full-spectrum dominance" - in which its country could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major-theatre wars" - was a monster borne up by the high tide of techno euphoria of the 1990s.
Ex-hippies talked of a wired age of Aquarius. The fall of the Berlin wall and the rise of the internet, we were told, had ushered in Adam Smith's dream of overflowing abundance, expanding liberty and perpetual peace. Fukuyama speculated that history was over, leaving us just to hoard and spend. Technology meant a new paradigm of constant growth without inflation or recession.
But darker dreams surfaced in America's military universities. The theorists of the "revolution in military affairs" predicted that technology would lead to easy and perpetual US dominance of the world. Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters advised on "future warfare" at the Army War College - prophesying in 1997 a coming "age of constant conflict". Thomas Barnett at the Naval War College assisted Vice-Admiral Cebrowski in developing "network-centric warfare". General John Jumper of the air force predicted a planet easily mastered from air and space. American forces would win everywhere because they enjoyed what was unashamedly called the "God's-eye" view of satellites and GPS: the "global information grid". This hegemony would be welcomed as the cutting edge of human progress. Or at worst, the military geeks candidly explained, US power would simply terrify others into submitting to the stars and stripes.
Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance - a key strategic document published in 1996 - aimed to understand how to destroy the "will to resist before, during and after battle". For Harlan Ullman of the National Defence University, its main author, the perfect example was the atom bomb at Hiroshima. But with or without such a weapon, one could create an illusion of unending strength and ruthlessness. Or one could deprive an enemy of the ability to communicate, observe and interact - a macro version of the sensory deprivation used on individuals - so as to create a "feeling of impotence". And one must always inflict brutal reprisals against those who resist. An alternative was the "decay and default" model, whereby a nation's will to resist collapsed through the "imposition of social breakdown".
Israel and the Neocons, The Libby Affair and the Internal War The national debate, which the indictment of Irving Lewis Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice has aroused in the mass media, has failed to address the most basic questions concerning the deep structural context, which influenced his felonious behavior. The most superficial explanation was that Libby, by exposing Valerie Plame (a CIA employee), acted out of revenge to punish her husband Wilson for exposing the lies put forth by Bush about Iraq's "importation" of uranium from Niger. Other journalists claim that Libby acted to cover up the fabrications to go to war. The assertion however raises a deeper question -- who were the fabricators of war propaganda, who was Libby protecting? And not only the "fabricators of war", but the strategic planners, speech-makers and architects of war who acted hand in hand with the propagandists and the journalists who disseminated the propaganda? What is the link between all these high- level functionaries, propagandists and journalists?
Equally important given the positions of power which this cabal occupied, and the influence they exercised in the mass media as well as in designing strategic policy, what forces were engaged in bringing criminal charges against a key operative of the cabal?
Libby's rise to power was part and parcel of the ascendancy of the neo-conservatives to the summits of US policymaking. Libby was a student, protégé, and collaborator with Paul Wolfowitz for over 25 years. Libby along with Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Kagan, Cohen, Rubin, Pollack, Chertoff, Fleisher, Kristol, Marc Grossman, Shumsky and a host of other political operators were long term believers and aggressive proponents of a virulently militaristic tendency of Zionism linked with the rightwing Likud Party of Israel. Early in the 1980's, Wolfowitz and Feith were charged with passing confidential documents to Israel, the latter temporarily losing his security clearance
U.S. Exit Strategy in Iraq: Hand Quagmire to Iran For Arab media commentators across the region, the provocative speeches of Iran's new president merely aim to distract attention from that country's increasingly central role in Washington's emerging exit strategy from Iraq.
"The (American) decision to open direct contacts with Iran means that Iraq will be handed over to Iran," Fadel Al Rabee, a spokesman for the National Iraqi Alliance, told "Behind the News," a daily news program on Al Jazeera. "The U.S. is ignoring the Saudi advice not to do so. Instead, they are allowing the Iranian influence to grow stronger in Iraq," Al Rabee added.
He said the U.S. exit strategy is similar to the one used by the French to drag the Americans into Vietnam before they left. In this way Shiite Iran will become a "partner in the occupation of Iraq" and inevitably find itself head-to-head with the Sunni-led national Iraqi resistance.
"The U.S. is helpless in Iraq and needs Iran in Southern Iraq and to negotiate with the Shiites," Al Watan Al Arabi magazine quotes Ayatollah Mahdi Haeri, a spokesman of the Iranian Muslim Scholars Abroad. "The Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Al Jafari, who keeps saying that the U.S. must speak with Iran to achieve security in Iraq, is trying to mediate a deal between Iran and the U.S.," Maeri adds.
There is already speculation that 50,000 U.S. soldiers will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2006 and the rest will be stationed in 12 American bases throughout the country. According to Al Jazeera, the U.S. Congress has allocated $236 million to build another permanent base in 2005.
rootsie on 12.28.05 @ 08:09 AM CST [
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Thursday, December 22nd
Ice Age Footprints Said Found in Outback
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Hundreds of human footprints dating back to the last Ice Age have been found in the remote Australian Outback, an official and media reported Thursday.
The 457 footprints found in Mungo National Park in western New South Wales state is the largest collection of its kind in the world and the oldest in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported.
The prints were made in moist clay near the Willandra Lakes 19,000 to 23,000 years ago, the newspaper reported ahead of archeologists' report on the find to be published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
State Environment Minister Bob Debus said the site showed a large group of people walking and interacting.
"We see children running between the tracks of their parents; the children running in meandering circles as their parents travel in direct lines," Debus told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.
"It's a most extraordinary snapshot of a moment or several moments in the life of Aboriginal people living on the edge of the lake in western New South Wales 20,000 years ago," he added.
apnews.myway.com
rootsie on 12.22.05 @ 07:20 AM CST [
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Court rules against govt in Padilla case
12/21/05 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration, a U.S. appeals court refused on Wednesday to transfer "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla from U.S. military custody to federal authorities in Florida until the Supreme Court considered his case.
The court said bringing criminal charges against Padilla in Florida after he had been held by the U.S. military for more than three years created the appearance the government may be attempting to avoid high court review of the case.
Padilla, an American citizen, was charged last month with being part of a support cell providing money and recruits for militants overseas. The Justice Department had accused Padilla after his arrest in May 2002 of plotting to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb."
The ruling came on a day the administration was struggling to get the anti-terrorism Patriot Act reauthorized, and while it is under fire in the U.S. Congress for President George W. Bush's secret order allowing domestic eavesdropping.
The appeals court also rejected the government's request that it set aside a ruling that allowed Padilla to be held as an enemy combatant without being charged. Wiping out that ruling would have made it virtually impossible for the Supreme Court to review the case.
The Bush administration, in bringing the criminal charges against Padilla, maintained that his challenge to being held by the military was moot and must be rejected by the Supreme Court.
The justices could decide as early as next month whether to hear his case.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.22.05 @ 07:15 AM CST [
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Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey
Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.
Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 12.22.05 @ 07:12 AM CST [
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Bolivia's Morales brands Bush a "terrorist"
DUBAI (Reuters) - Evo Morales, the winner of Bolivia's presidential election, branded U.S. President George W. Bush a "terrorist", in an interview with Arabic satellite television on Tuesday.
"The only terrorist in this world that I know of is Bush. His military intervention, such as the one in Iraq, that is state terrorism," he told Al Jazeera television.
The leftist won slightly more than half the votes cast in Bolivia's election on Sunday and is set to become the country's first indigenous president.
"There is a difference between people fighting for a cause and what terrorists do," he said in comments, which were translated into Arabic.
"Today in Bolivia and Latin America, it's no longer people that are lifting their weapons against imperialism, but it's imperialism that is lifting its weapons against people through military intervention and military bases."
reuters.co.uk
rootsie on 12.22.05 @ 07:09 AM CST [
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Sunni and secular parties seek Iraq election rerun
A broad-based group of Sunni and secular parties called yesterday for a rerun of last week's Iraqi elections, claiming the ruling party in the country had engaged in blatant fraud. "We want a new election commission and we're going to ask the United Nations to help organise it," Thair al-Naqeeb, the spokesman for Ayad Allawi, the head of the Iraqi National List, told the Guardian last night.
"We're going to ask for a new government to rule while the election is prepared. If our demands are not met, we will take further steps and create a lot of protest," he added.
Mr Allawi was Washington's favourite to become prime minister in the new four-year parliament. His list includes liberals, communists, and representatives of several ethnic minorities, as well as secular Sunnis and Shias. It is considered to be the most balanced of any group in last week's poll and is firmly opposed to religion interfering in politics.
But preliminary results announced this week gave it a worse score than it expected, and it will probably end up with barely half the 40 seats it has in the current parliament.
guardian.co.ukKurdistan: Voting Irregularities Reported in Kurdish Areas
rootsie on 12.22.05 @ 07:04 AM CST [
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Wednesday, December 21st
Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest
A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.
Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:42 AM CST [
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Saudi to build 26-billion-dollar new city
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia unveiled a 26.6-billion-dollar project to build a state-of-the art residential and industrial city, timed with its new membership to the World Trade Organisation. King Abdullah Economic City will be located near the western industrial city of Rabegh on the Red Sea coast, north of the kingdom's second largest city, Jeddah.
An Emaar-led consortium made up of Saudi and Emirati companies, including the Saudi Bin Laden construction company, will be the main investor in the development.
The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), which is in charge of attracting foreign investment to the kingdom, will be project coordinator.
"In what is considered the single largest private sector investment in Saudi Arabia, the announcement ... is a signal of the dawn of a new era of economic prosperity for the citizens of the kingdom," Emaar said on Tuesday.
breitbart.com
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:36 AM CST [
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US Research 'Endangered Amazon Villagers'
Health officials in Brazil have launched an investigation after claims that at least 10 impoverished Brazilians from an Amazon village may have contracted malaria while being used as human "guinea pigs" during a study by an American university.
The $1m (£570,000) research project, funded by the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the University of Florida, was being carried out in three villages on the Matapi river in the northern state of Amapa. It intended to study feeding patterns among mosquitoes over a four-year period in order to help control malaria outbreaks.
But critics say villagers were manipulated into taking part in the project and that those who allegedly contracted malaria as a result were offered no medical treatment. Brazil's Medical Council suspended the project last Wednesday following the allegations.
Villagers in Sao Raimundo da Pirativa, Sao Joao and Santo Antonio were paid between R$12 and R$20 (£3-£5) to collect mosquitoes on their bodies, while some were required to expose themselves to mosquito bites for periods of up to six hours.
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:31 AM CST [
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Bolivia's Morales blasts U.S. policies on drug trafficking
In his first news conference since claiming victory, he insisted he is opposed to drugs, but disputed Washington's methods.
"The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases, and we're not in agreement," he told reporters.
"We support an effective fight against drugs. Neither cocaine nor drug trafficking are part of the Bolivian culture," he said in his stronghold of Cochabamba, as the first official results from Sunday's vote trickled in.
Washington considers Mr. Morales, who first rose to power as the leader of the country's coca-leaf farmers, an enemy in its anti-drug fight in Bolivia, the third-biggest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru.
theglobeandmail.com
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:27 AM CST [
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Venezuela gives Exxon ultimatum
Venezuela has given the world's biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, until the end of this year to enter a joint venture with the state.
Failure to do so will almost certainly result in Exxon losing its oil field concessions in the country.
Venezuela's socialist government has now signed new agreements with almost all foreign petroleum companies.
After months of pressure from left- wing leader Hugo Chavez most foreign oil firms working there have caved in.
They have agreed to hand over a controlling stake of their oil interests to the Venezuelan state.
This means that Venezuela now calls the shots in what the foreign guests can and cannot do.
In addition, the companies which have signed the new contracts - such as Chevron, BP, Shell and Total - will in future be presented with much higher tax bills by the government.
But Venezuela says it is only fair that the foreigners are made to pay up as they have got away lightly in the past.
Much of the oil revenue in Venezuela goes into social projects in shanty towns and poor rural areas.
But the US oil giant, ExxonMobil, is digging in its heels and is so far refusing to agree to the terms of the new deal.
Exxon risks losing Venezuelan operations if it fails to comply.
There is growing unease among foreign energy companies based Latin America that they may be forced to become junior partners by a string of left wing governments.
In the case of Bolivia and the apparent shift to the left there following elections on Sunday, it is possible that the new government will decide to follow Venezuela's example and renegotiate oil and gas contracts with foreign investors.
bbc.co.uk
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:22 AM CST [
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Alaska Files Suit Against BP, Exxon Mobil
JUNEAU, Alaska — An antitrust lawsuit filed Monday against Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC claims the two oil giants are restricting the nation's supply of natural gas and keeping prices at record highs.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fairbanks, says the two companies acted together to eliminate competition for the exploration, development and marketing of natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to U.S. markets.
chron.com
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:17 AM CST [
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Central Asia, Washington and Beijing Energy Geo-politics
On December 15, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) inaugurated an oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan to northwest China. That pipeline will undercut the geopolitical significance of the Washington-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline which opened this past summer amid big fanfare and support from Washington. The geopolitical chess game for the control of the energy flows of Central Asia and overall of Eurasia from the Atlantic to the China Sea is sharply evident in the latest developments.
Making the Kazakh-China oil pipeline link even more politically interesting, from the standpoint of an emerging Eurasian move towards some form of greater energy independence from Washington, is the fact that China is reportedly considering asking Russian companies to help it fill the pipeline with oil, until Kazakh supply is sufficient. Initially, half the oil pumped through the new 200,000 barrel-a-day pipeline will come from Russia because of insufficient output from nearby Kazakh fields, Kazakhstan's Vice Energy Minister Musabek Isayev said Nov. 30 in Beijing.
That means closer China-Kazakh-Russia energy cooperation--the nightmare scenario of Washington geopolitical strategists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski or Henry Kissinger.
globalresearch.ca
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:13 AM CST [
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IRISH ZIONIST SLUR BLASTED BY ISRAEL
An aide to Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told the Jewish Telegraph that Zionism was a religious issue and refused to take a position on "an Old Testament mandate".
The Israeli government hit back, comparing the Republic to the hardline Iranian regime.
"I am very sorry that Ireland takes this position because in doing that they support [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," blasted a senior aide to premier Ariel Sharon.
Last month Ahmadinejad told a "World without Zionism" conference that Israel should be "wiped off the map".
We are lifting the lid on these explosive comments after Mr Ahern refused to go on the record to denounce claims by former Irish minister Justin Keating that Jews have mounted a "self-serving and untruthful Zionist myth" to lay claim to Israel.
jewishtelegraph.co.uk
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:09 AM CST [
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Documentary Relives Horror of Shatila Massacre
DUBAI, December 15, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Twenty-three years after hacking to death Palestinian refugees, six Israeli-backed Lebanese Christian militiamen show no remorse recounting the massacre in a new chilling documentary.
"With hanging or shooting you just die, but this is double," recalls one of the men, explaining how he took an old Palestinian and held him back against a wall, slicing him open in the shape of a cross.
"You die twice since you also die from the fear," he says nonchalantly of the act, describing white flesh and bone.
German director Monika Borgmann's film "Massaker" shows the six speaking out for the first time about their role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre during Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
Though no definite figures are available, around 2,000 Palestinians were massacred inside the camps in September of 1982 by the Christian militia under the watchful eyes of their Israeli alley.
Unlike massacres in some other conflicts, the perpetrators of Sabra and Shatila have not been brought to justice.
islamonline.net
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 07:02 AM CST [
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US hopes of secular Iraqi state fade away
CONSERVATIVE religious parties have surged to a runaway lead in the counting of votes to appoint a government to run Iraq for the next four years.
With more than 60 per cent of votes tallied, Washington's hopes that the former prime minister Iyad Allawi might pull enough support to build a secular administration have faded dramatically.
Instead, a religious alliance is in the box seat. These parties are already imposing a strict religious code on daily life across swathes of the country and are closely aligned with neighbouring Iran, one of George Bush's "axis of evil" enemies.
smh.com.auWhatever 'the plan' might be, this is part of it.National Conservative Weekly: Israel Increasingly Likely to Attack IranJerusalem Post: 'Iran obtained 12 long-range missiles'Reuters: Exiles say Iran uses tunnels to hide atomic workTurkish Press: CIA’S GOSS REPORTEDLY WARNED ANKARA OF IRANIAN THREAT
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 06:57 AM CST [
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Bush’s Snoopgate
The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security.
informationclearinghouse.infoBush accuses leak instigators of helping enemy Insisting that the spying by the highly secretive NSA had been essential in the war against terrorism, Mr Bush said: "It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this important program in a time of war."
He added: "The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."
Lewis Calls for Bush ImpeachmentSenator says she's asked for opinions on Bush
impeachmentF.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show "New York Times" -- -- WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.
F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.
But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.
One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
rootsie on 12.21.05 @ 06:43 AM CST [
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Tuesday, December 20th
In pictures: Bolivians elect leader
bbc: Bolivian election
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:55 AM CST [
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Terror agency operates in U.S.: Pentagon unit collects intelligence
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon's newest counterterrorism agency, charged with protecting military facilities and personnel wherever they are, is carrying out intelligence collection, analysis and operations within the United States and abroad, according to a Pentagon fact sheet on the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, provided to The Washington Post.
CIFA is a three-year-old agency whose size and budget remain secret. It has grown from an agency that coordinated policy and oversaw the counterintelligence activities of units within the military services and Pentagon agencies, to an analytic and operational organization with nine directorates and ever-widening authority.
Its Directorate of Field Activities (DX) "assists in preserving the most critical defense assets, disrupting adversaries and helping control the intelligence domain," the fact sheet said. Those roles can range from running roving patrols around military bases and facilities to surveillance of potentially threatening people or organizations inside the United States. The DX also provides "on-site, real time ... support in hostile areas worldwide to protect both U.S. and host nation personnel from a variety of threats," the fact sheet said.
This is just one illustration of the quiet growth of Pentagon activities inside the United States and abroad as part of the war on terror. Last week, news accounts revealed that President Bush authorized secret eavesdropping on Americans with suspected ties to terrorist groups.
Another CIFA directorate, the Counterintelligence and Law Enforcement Center "identifies and assesses threats" to Defense personnel, operations and infrastructure from "insider threats, foreign intelligence services, terrorists, and other clandestine or covert entities," according to the Pentagon.
post-gazette.com
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:51 AM CST [
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World's poorest pay for WTO compromise: Africa
Johannesburg, December 19: Africans reacted with dismay on Monday to a World Trade Organisation compromise deal on global trade, saying the world's poorest continent would pay the price for the intransigence of rich nations.
"The developed countries once again failed to extend a hand of solidarity to the poor," South Africa's powerful COSATU labour federation said in a statement, calling Sunday's last-minute WTO agreement in Hong Kong an 'abysmal failure'.
"The situation will remain that it would be better to be a cow in Japan, subsidised for $7 per day, than to be a human being living in Africa," he said.
expressindia.comWolfowitz Has Moved on From Iraq Paul Wolfowitz -- one of the chief architects at the Pentagon of the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- is a lucky man.
He doesn't have to worry any more about whether his past hawkish Pentagon policies were right or wrong or worth the human sacrifice.
Wolfowitz has moved on to become president of the World Bank, where his job is giving multibillion-dollar loans to underdeveloped countries.
In a formal speech at the National Press Club on Dec. 7, Wolfowitz wanted to speak about global poverty, not Iraq.
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:45 AM CST [
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U.S. House Wraps Up Budget With Defense Plan, Spending Cuts
Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. House adjourned for the year after approving a $453 billion Department of Defense budget for fiscal 2006 and $39.7 billion in spending cuts over five years to benefit programs such as Medicaid and student loans.
bloomberg.comCongressional Perks: How the Trappings of Office Trap Taxpayers Since the founding of the Republic, Americans have had a healthy skepticism of the concentration of power. The Framers of the Constitution established a system they hoped would prevent not only the disproportionate accumulation of influence in one branch of government, but also the disproportionate accumulation of privilege.
Today, Members of the United States Congress enjoy a vast web of perquisites that benefit them personally as well as professionally, including:
Comfortable salaries that are often determined through legislative sleight-of-hand. Contrary to the arguments of many Washington "insiders," the cost of living has rarely eroded the historical value of lawmakers' pay, which on a constant-dollar basis is hovering near the postwar high.
Pension benefits that are two to three times more generous than those offered in the private sector for similarly-salaried executives. Taxpayers directly cover at least 80 percent of this costly plan. Congressional pensions are also inflation-protected, a feature that fewer than 1 in 10 private plans offer.
Health and life insurance, approximately 3/4 and 1/3 of whose costs, respectively, are subsidized by taxpayers.
Wheeled perks, including limousines for senior Members, prized parking spaces on Capitol Hill, and choice spots at Washington's two major airports.
Travel to far-flung destinations as well as to home states and districts. Despite recent attempts to toughen gift and travel rules, "junkets" are still readily available prerogatives for many Members.
A wide range of smaller perks that have defied reform efforts, from cut-rate health clubs to fine furnishings.
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:38 AM CST [
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Harold Pinter, John Le Carré And The Media
...It is a brutal fact of modern media and politics that honesty and sincerity are not rewarded, but instead heavily punished, by powerful interests with plenty at stake. It does not matter how often the likes of Pinter, Le Carré, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger are shown to be right. It does not matter how often the likes of Bush and Blair are shown to have lied in the cause of power and profits. The job of mainstream journalism is to learn nothing from the past, to treat rare individuals motivated by compassion as rare fools deserving contempt.
The benefits are clear enough: if even high-profile dissidents can be painted as wretched, sickly fools, then which reader or viewer would want to be associated with dissent? Then 'normal' - conforming, consuming, looking after 'number one' - can be made to seem healthy, balanced, sensible and sane. Historian Howard Zinn made the point well:
"Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often led to accept, without much questioning, someone else's version of what that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be sceptical of someone else's description of reality." (The Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.338)
The great task of propaganda is to make dissent seem unrealistic, embarrassing, and absurd.
medialens.org
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:32 AM CST [
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Iraq fuel price hike sparks protests
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Violent demonstrations broke out across Iraq and the oil minister threatened to resign Monday after the government raised the prices of gasoline and cooking fuel by up to nine times.
The Cabinet raised the prices of gasoline, diesel, kerosene and cooking gas on Sunday to curb a growing black market, Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.
The price of a liter of imported and super gasoline was raised to 17 cents, which is a fivefold increase from previous prices. There are about 3.8 liters in a gallon, meaning the new price is about 65 cents a gallon.
The price of locally produced gasoline was raised about sevenfold to about 12 cents per liter, or about 46 cents a gallon.
In Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, police fired into the air to disperse hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the provincial government headquarters.
seattlepi.nwsource.com
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:25 AM CST [
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Victims of Creeping Fascism
When a sitting president declares that the constitution is just “A God damned piece of paper,” it reveals much about his inner character; or lack thereof. It reveals dangerous illusions of omnipotence, contempt for the law, and scorn for the people. It was George Bush who uttered those tortured words to Whitehouse aides last week. Easily misled by false idols intoxicated with power and driven by insatiable greed, we are witnessing nothing less astonishing than the demise of the American experiment. Dreams of democracy, justice, peace and hope are receding into the dim recesses of ever more distant memory. We see them morphing into an Orwellian nightmare of monstrous proportions that promises to pursue us to our graves. If we continue on this course of ethical decline, in another decade we will not even be able to recall the forms and texture of those dreams that once held so much promise.
informationclearimghouse.info
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:17 AM CST [
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The War Parties, Both of Them
There is a dreadful disconnect between the American conversation on Iraq, and the opinions of Iraqis and most people in the world. We know that more than 80 percent of Iraqis want the U.S. troops to get out of their country. This figure is so high, it reflects a consensus among all three major groups: Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. If Americans respected Iraqi opinion – their true democratic aspirations – there would be no question that the U.S. would leave. But instead, the corporate U.S. media pretends that America has brought democracy to Iraq, while disregarding Iraqi opinion. Only American opinion counts.
But it gets crazier, because a majority of Americans also want the U.S. to get out of Iraq, forthwith. So it appears that American public opinion doesn’t count for much, either. Americans want out of Iraq, and Iraqis want them out, but the two war parties, Democrats and Republicans, operate in a different reality zone. They continue to speak of the “necessity” of an American presence in Iraq for an unknown time frame. Senator Barack Obama, who many of us invested great hopes in, sings the same nonsensical song. Nancy Pelosi, a former leader of the Progressive Congressional Caucus and now leader of House Democrats, exerts her powers to muzzle the majority of her party that is anti-war. Eighty-five percent of Democrats want out of Iraq, quickly. But Obama and Pelosi are listening to other voices. None of this has anything to do with democracy, either for Iraqis or for Americans.
Worst of all, the Congressional Black Caucus has been neutered, as a body. Ninety-five percent of African Americans want out of the war, according to polls. All but two of the 42 Black members of the U.S. House of Representatives depend on these Black voters for their political existence. Yet the Black Caucus effectively takes its marching orders from Nancy Pelosi, disregarding overwhelming Black anti-war opinion. There is no semblance of democracy in the air.
blackcommentator.com
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:13 AM CST [
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Shocked scientists find tsunami legacy: a dead sea
A "DEAD zone" devoid of life has been discovered at the epicentre of last year's tsunami four kilometres beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean.
Scientists taking part in a worldwide marine survey made an 11-hour dive at the site five months after the disaster.
They were shocked to find no sign of life around the epicentre, which opened up a 1000-metre chasm on the ocean floor.
Instead, there was nothing but eerie emptiness. The powerful lights of the scientists’ submersible vehicle, piercing through the darkness, showed no trace of anything living.
A scientist working on the Census of Marine Life project, Ron O’Dor, of Dalhousie University in Canada, said: “You’d expect a site like this to be quickly recolonised, but that hasn’t happened. It’s unprecedented.”
gnn.tv
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:08 AM CST [
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The Exotic Adventures of Neil Bush
If people know anything at all about the star-crossed Neil Bush, it likely relates to either his role in the failed Silverado Savings and Loan scandal during the 1980s, which cost taxpayers more than one billion dollars, or, more recently, the lurid details of his divorce from his wife of 23 years.
After a brief hiatus from the public spotlight, Neil Bush is back. Within a three-month period, Bush has shown up in Latvia, Ukraine and Georgia with Russian fugitive Boris Berezovsky, and has appeared at the side of the Unification Church's Rev. Sun Myung Moon in Taiwan and the Philippines.
...Bush, along with other "peace leaders", joined with Moon in meeting with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The president "praised Moon for his global peace efforts and God-centered, family-centered economic and social initiatives in various parts of the world, including projects in a number of Philippine cities", the Manila paper reported.
Moon's Philippines trip, one stop on a 100-day tour that is taking him to 100 cities in 67 nations and covering nearly 100,000 miles, was aimed at building momentum for his idea of developing a faith-based path to peace by revamping the United Nations.
Veteran investigative reporter John Gorenfeld told IPS that, "Moon speaks in parables from the Book of Genesis. He says the U.N. is like Cain, but he wants to build a second entity that is like Abel. Ideally his 'Abel U.N.' -- a body fusing all religions -- would be embraced by the U.N. But if not, he wants to set up his own alternative diplomatic machine to outshine the U.N."
During a May 2003 meeting with President Bush at the White House, Philippines President Arroyo suggested that the United States might consider co-sponsoring the proposal, the conservative online news magazine, NewsMax.com reported. According to that report, the president "expressed deep interest and asked his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to study the matter".
rootsie on 12.20.05 @ 07:02 AM CST [link]
Monday, December 19th
Leftist candidate Morales elected president in Bolivia
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia - Peasant leader Evo Morales, who has harshly criticized U.S. policies in Latin America, won a major victory Sunday in the race for this fractured country's presidency, adding to a rising wave of leftist governments in the region.
According to a survey of 1,250 polling places conducted by a group of Bolivian media, Morales had won 51 percent of the vote, with former President Jorge "Tuto" Quiroga coming in second with 30 percent. Businessman Samuel Doria Medina won 8 percent of the vote.
Quiroga conceded defeat.
Morales, a 46-year-old Aymara Indian who will be Bolivia's first indigenous president, has made international headlines with his bold attacks on Washington-backed policies such as free trade agreements and the eradication of coca leaf, the main ingredient in cocaine.
His election marked a significant setback for U.S. interests in Latin America. U.S. diplomats had remained studiously silent during the campaign to avoid the appearance of interfering in the election and tipping public opinion toward the strongly anti-U.S. candidate.
mercurynews.comBolivia's hero vows to break US shackles On a barren landing strip in Bolivia's mining heartland of Oruro, hundreds of people, including miners carrying dynamite charges, stir at the sight of an approaching small plane. It's a stampede by the time it lands, as the crowds rush down the slope to greet an emerging heavy-built man. He is Evo Morales, a 46-year-old Aymara Indian, leading candidate in today's presidential elections and leader of a left-wing revolution that may soon engulf most of South America.
Morales is on the verge of becoming the first wholly Indian leader in Latin America.
...Morales is riding a wave of anger from Bolivia's impoverished Indian majority who have not seen any benefits from years of free-market policies and the sale of the country's natural resources by a mostly white elite to huge multinationals.
In few places is the country's ingrained injustice as visible as in the arid region of Oruro, birthplace of the Bolivian trade union movement, whose tin mines have maintained the state for decades, while its inhabitants live in miserable mud huts. Morales was born there, before being forced by drought to move to the region of Chapare, where he later emerged as the leader of the coca farmers, launching his political career.
Morales's first stop in Oruro is Uncía. Jumping on a tractor and trundling slowly towards the main town square, he is followed by a long caravan of vehicles and by dynamite explosions in substitution for fireworks. Some 3,000 Indians listen intently and in a combative mood. 'We're determined to wrest control over our resources and our lives after the efforts to eliminate the Indians from the period of the Spanish colony. We will bury American imperialism!' declares Morales amid shouts of 'El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!' (The people united will never be defeated!)
NY Times headline:Bolivia Elects a President Who Supports Coca Farming
rootsie on 12.19.05 @ 07:39 AM CST [
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Chavez and Uribe Put Aside Differences
Colombia — One leader sometimes wears a red beret and calls himself a revolutionary. The other prefers pressed white shirts and considers himself a no-nonsense crusader against a bloody leftist insurgency.
Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Alvaro Uribe of Colombia are diametrically opposed in style and ideology, but they have largely put aside their differences and overcome disputes over the years, building what appears to be an uncommon friendship.
Uribe, whose close ties with President Bush contrast with Chavez's frequent criticism of United States "imperialism," assured Chavez he would not allow Colombia to serve as a base for opponents who may be plotting to overthrow the leftist leader.
After studying documents provided by Chavez, Uribe said he had confirmed that a group of former Venezuelan military officers recently went to a government building in Bogota to meet with Colombian military officers.
Uribe offered no details about the meeting but said he took full responsibility and had issued a warning that no conspiracy against Chavez would be tolerated.
chron.comColombian President to US: Stop Meddling Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, one of Washington's best friends in South America, told the United States to stop "meddling" in his country's affairs after the U.S. ambassador urged him to take steps against corruption in regional elections.
U.S. Ambassador William Wood, in a speech in the capital Friday, said the 2003 elections for mayors and governors saw many unopposed candidates because potential opponents were bribed, scared off and, in some cases, murdered.
He said rightist paramilitary groups were often to blame for those abuses and warned the same could happen in elections scheduled for March elections.
The illegal paramilitaries recently signed a peace deal that makes fighters who disarm eligible for benefits such as reduced prison sentences, pardons, job training and stipends. Wood said fighters who seek to manipulate elections should be stripped of their benefits.
Uribe responded in a sharply worded statement late Friday.
"The Colombian government does not accept the meddling of foreign governments, even if it is the United States," he said, adding that it is already clear that paramilitary leaders lose benefits if they break the law.
Uribe said Washington should not try to use Plan Colombia, an anti-drug program funded mostly by a $4 billion aid package from Washington, "to put pressure on our country."
The U.S. Embassy said Wood meant no offense by his remarks.
"There was no intention to interfere in any way with Colombian elections, but rather to support the democratic, free, open and impartial process," the embassy said in a statement Saturday.
Uribe, a conservative who took office in 2002, is viewed as Washington's main ally in Latin America.
Colombia peace talks begin in Cuba -- Exploratory peace talks between Colombia and its second-largest rebel group began Friday in Cuba with help from Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and facilitators from Spain, Norway and Switzerland.
Given the history of failed attempts at peace in Colombia, the nation's peace commissioner urged all parties involved in the talks to work to regain the confidence of Colombia's people.
"Our main concern at this time is to gain trust," said Luis Carlos Restrepo, speaking at the official opening of negotiations. "Colombia can't take any more setbacks."
Restrepo, who was representing the Colombian government, promised to be realistic and responsible in talks with the rebels.
For his part, the representative of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, promised to listen to the Colombian government's position, but said the rebels would not accept any superficial solution and called for massive changes in the social, economic and political structure of the country.
Antonio Garcia, the military commander of the ELN, promised, however, that his rebel group won't give up easily.
"We are not going to run," Garcia told reporters. "If the obstacles are big, we'll have to look for support in society, support in the international community. We'll have to reflect deeply on the obstacles, and work hard to overcome them ... to clear the way to peace."
Several informal talks between the Colombian government and the ELN have failed since 1998. Earlier this year, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe accused Garcia of frustrating peace efforts.
"It should make then ashamed if they don't arrive at anything this time," said Garcia Marquez, talking with officials on the sidelines of the event. The author did not address the gathering.
When Cuba last hosted Colombia's talks with the ELN, in 2002, then-President Andres Pastrana pulled out, saying the rebel group was not interested in peace. Friday's talks mark the Uribe administration's first formal negotiations with insurgents.
Garcia urged patience this time, warning that the ELN's 41-year war against the Colombian state would not end overnight.
"Peace is not a moment, it's not an act," Garcia said. "It's a process, it's the construction of a stage."
It's pretty obvious that Castro and Chavez are doing some clever long-term strategizing. Fidel has been waiting a long time for an ally, and now there's Chavez and Morales and Lula (maybe) and the president of Uruguay too. The indigenous democratic values of Latin America may finally have their day.
rootsie on 12.19.05 @ 07:28 AM CST [
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Achievements Under Aristide, Now Lost
The long-suffering people of Haiti suffered a catastrophic blow in February, 2004 when U.S. Marines kidnapped and deposed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The U.S., supported by Canada and France, forced him into exile, forbade him from even returning to the hemisphere, and reestablished a despotic interim puppet government backed and enforced by so-called UN peacekeepers and a brutal Haitian National Police. U.S. officials also threatened Aristide with a second abduction followed by a trial and imprisonment in the U.S. [on totally fraudulent charges of looting the Haitian treasury, money laundering and taking payoffs from drug traffickers] if he dared act or speak out forcefully against his ousting, forced exile and the deplorable situation now in Haiti. These charges are currently included in a baseless lawsuit the so-called Interim Government of Haiti has filed against President Aristide even as they carry out a reign of terror against the Haitian people. And as they do it, conditions in the country continue to deterioriate as the occupying forces clamp down on the people ahead of so-called Presidential and legislative elections in January. With Haiti an occupied country, the freedom and democracy they had is now lost and along with it a decade of impressive social, economic and political gains they never had before.
zmag.org
rootsie on 12.19.05 @ 07:06 AM CST [
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Sen. Reid calls US Congress 'most corrupt in history'--but he got $ from Abramoff too!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid called the Republican-led Congress "the most corrupt in history" on Sunday, and distanced himself from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, at the center of an escalating probe.
The Justice Department is investigating whether Jack Abramoff directed illegal payoffs to lawmakers, including Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, who was forced to step down as House Republican leader in September after indicted in his home state of Texas on unrelated charges.
"Don't lump me in with Jack Abramoff. This is a Republican scandal," Reid told Fox News Sunday, saying he never received any money from Abramoff.
Reid, like many members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, has received campaign contributions from Abramoff clients. Some lawmakers have returned those donations, but Reid gave no indication he would do so.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 12.19.05 @ 07:02 AM CST [
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Pakistan to stand by Iran in case of US aggression: Kasuri
KASUR: Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri has said Pakistan strictly opposes any expected US attack on Iran, and will stand by Iran if this extreme step is taken by Washington.
Iranian foreign minister’s statement during his recent visit to Pakistan provides testimony to our policy towards Tehran. Pakistan aspires to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue according to the principles of the IAEA, he added.
Kasuri told newsmen here on Saturday neglecting defence would be a suicide in the present scenario and Pakistan would acquire latest technology and defence equipment at all costs to maintain a balance of power in the region.
jang.com.pkWhat about Israeli aggression, privately sanctioned but publically 'condemned'?
rootsie on 12.19.05 @ 06:57 AM CST [
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Sunday, December 18th
THE USES OF AFRICA
Remote and Poked, Anthropology's Dream Tribe LEWOGOSO LUKUMAI, Kenya - The rugged souls living in this remote desert enclave have been poked, pinched and plucked, all in the name of science. It is not always easy, they say, to be the subject of a human experiment.
"I thought I was being bewitched," Koitaton Garawale, a weathered cattleman, said of the time a researcher plucked a few hairs from atop his head. "I was afraid. I'd never seen such a thing before."
Another member of the tiny and reclusive Ariaal tribe, Leketon Lenarendile, scanned a handful of pictures laid before him by a researcher whose unstated goal was to gauge whether his body image had been influenced by outside media. "The girls like the ones like this," he said, repeating the exercise later and pointing to a rather slender man much like himself. "I don't know why they were asking me that," he said.
Anthropologists and other researchers have long searched the globe for people isolated from the modern world. The Ariaal, a nomadic community of about 10,000 people in northern Kenya, have been seized on by researchers since the 1970's, after one - an anthropologist, Elliot Fratkin - stumbled upon them and began publishing his accounts of their lives in academic journals.
Other researchers have done studies on everything from their cultural practices to their testosterone levels. National Geographic focused on the Ariaal in 1999, in an article on vanishing cultures.
Frist AIDS Charity Paid Consultants WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's AIDS charity paid nearly a half-million dollars in consulting fees to members of his political inner circle, according to tax returns providing the first financial accounting of the presidential hopeful's nonprofit.
The returns for World of Hope Inc., obtained by The Associated Press, also show the charity raised the lion's share of its $4.4 million from just 18 sources. They gave between $97,950 and $267,735 each to help fund Frist's efforts to fight AIDS.
Time Honors Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono..."For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are Time's Persons of the Year," the magazine said.
rootsie on 12.18.05 @ 10:07 AM CST [
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Former Governor: The Value of Black Life in Maryland
...These results lead to the unfortunate conclusion that we value white life more than black life. Intentional or not -- and I believe it is not -- this is an indefensible and untenable position for the state. Whether one supports or opposes the death penalty in principle, all reasonable people understand that before we exercise the ultimate sanction, we must be confident that the system is, at a minimum, fair and accurate.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 12.18.05 @ 09:50 AM CST [
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In New Orleans, No Easy Work for Willing Latinos
NEW ORLEANS -- The come-on was irresistible: Hop in the truck. Go to New Orleans. Make a pile of cash.
Arturo jumped at it. Since that day when he left Houston, more than two months ago, he has slept on the floors of moldy houses, idled endlessly at day-laborer pickup stops and second-guessed himself nearly every minute.
For Arturo and countless Latinos, many of them also in the country illegally, flooded-out New Orleans has not turned out to be a modern-day El Dorado, where the streets are paved with gold. Instead, they have often been abandoned without transportation or shelter by the contractors who brought them to the city. They have struggled to find employment and been paid less than they were promised -- or not at all -- when they can find work.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 12.18.05 @ 09:45 AM CST [
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The Price of Oil
...Take a look at Nigeria, which has the misfortune of possessing more than 35 billion barrels of oil, much of it around the Niger Delta. When I visited last year, traveling through stunted mangrove swamps near Port Harcourt, there was a near-absence of birds, and oil was everywhere - not only dripping from rusty platforms atop the delta waters, but in the water itself, in the air, which smelled of petroleum, and in the gas flares that are a scalding feature of the injured landscape. Because of a host of political and economic ills triggered by the drilling, the Niger Delta is alive not with marine life but with violence - bands of tribal warriors wage an off-and-on war against one another and army troops.
Ecuador is another victim. After oil was discovered in its Oriente region in 1967, Texaco and a state-owned oil company operated an extraction program that, a quarter century later, had reduced parts of the Amazon to a deforested miasma of pollution and poverty. Chevron, which purchased Texaco, now faces a billion-dollar lawsuit accusing it of poisoning the land. Ecuador had a negligible foreign debt before oil was found but now owes $16 billion and, the greatest insult of all, more than 70 percent of the population now lives in poverty.
The harms suffered by these countries (and many others) are symptoms of what is known as the resource curse. Though it seems counterintuitive - countries with a lot of oil are lucky and rich, right? - a succession of studies, the most notable of which was conducted by the economists Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner, show that countries dependent on natural-resource exports experience lower growth rates than countries that have nonresource economies, and they suffer greater amounts of repression and conflict too. The reasons are complex - and there are exceptions to these dismal rules - but in general, a reliance on oil discourages investment in other industries, makes governments less responsive to the desires of citizens and fosters corruption by officials seeking and receiving funds that are not their due. An oil state is, almost by definition, a dysfunctional state.
nytimes.comWorld is at its hottest since prehistory, say scientists
rootsie on 12.18.05 @ 09:41 AM CST [
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Global trade riots rock Hong Kong
Hong Kong was hit by its most violent street clashes in more than 30 years last night as riot police fought running battles with protesters on the penultimate day of World Trade Organisation talks.
While negotiators inside the conference hall struggled to agree to a watered-down compromise on the future of global commerce, demonstrators outside ratcheted up their attempt to derail a deal that they believe sells poor countries short.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.18.05 @ 09:36 AM CST [
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Justices Are Urged to Dismiss Padilla Case
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 - It would be "wholly imprudent" for the Supreme Court to hear Jose Padilla's challenge to his military detention as an enemy combatant, the Bush administration told the court in urging the justices to dismiss Mr. Padilla's case as moot now that the government plans to try him on terrorism charges in a civilian court.
In a brief filed late Friday, the administration argued that Mr. Padilla's indictment last month by a federal grand jury has given him the "very relief" he sought when he filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal court. Any Supreme Court decision now on his petition, which a federal appeals court rejected in September, "will have no practical effect" on Mr. Padilla, the brief said.
nytimes.comSick, ain't it?
rootsie on 12.18.05 @ 09:32 AM CST [
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Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.
The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.
The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.
southcoasttoday.com
rootsie on 12.18.05 @ 09:28 AM CST [
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Shalom praises U.S. House of Representatives decision
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom praised the U.S. House of Representatives decision that the PA risks losing American financial aid if it allows Hamas to participate in January elections.
ynetnews.comIsrael Stages Series of Airstrikes on Gaza
rootsie on 12.18.05 @ 09:22 AM CST [
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Saturday, December 17th
Whiteness is a 'tiny defect'
Scientists Find Gene That Makes People Brown or White In a discovery that begins to shed light on what makes one person brown and another white, scientists have identified a gene that appears to be a key player in human pigmentation.
People share 99.9 percent of the same genes, yet pinpointing the very minor genetic variations that cause skin-color differences long has been a mystery to scientists. This discovery, published in the journal Science, marks a significant step toward understanding what's behind the panoply of human skin tones.
"The gene we found seems to modulate the number, size and density of cellular packets that contain brown pigment," said Keith Cheng, a geneticist at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pa.
Cheng's team found that people with the normal form of the gene SLC24A5 had brown skin, while fair people of European descent carried a modified form of the gene that led to having fewer and smaller pigment packets, known as melanosomes.
Bush Approved Eavesdropping, Official Says President Bush has personally authorized a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States more than three dozen times since October 2001, a senior intelligence official said Friday night.
N.Y. Times statement defends NSA reporting The Times story said the White House had asked the paper not to publish the article, and that the paper had delayed its publication for a year while it conducted additional reporting.
Bush Acknowledges Approving Eavesdropping WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday he personally has authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and he lashed out at those involved in publicly revealing the program.
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"This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," he said in a radio address delivered live from the White House's Roosevelt Room.
"This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States," Bush said.
An Incredible Day in America Today, for two separate reasons, has been an incredible day in America. First, the United States has legitimized torture and secondly, the President has admitted to an impeachable offense.
First, the media has been totally misled on the alleged Bush-McCain agreement on torture. McCain capitulated. It is not a defeat for Bush. It is a win for Cheney.
Torture is not banned or in any way impeded.
Under the compromise, anyone charged with torture can defend himself if a "reasonable" person could have concluded they were following a lawful order.
That defense "loophole" totally corrodes the ban. It is the CIA, or the torturing agency, who will decide what a "reasonable" person could have concluded. Can you imagine those agencies in the interrogation business torturing on their own in trying to decide what is reasonable or what is not? What is not "reasonable" if the interrogator (wrongfully or rightfully) believes he has a ticking-bomb situation? Will a CIA or military officer issue a narrow order if he knows his interrogator believes, in this case, torture will work?
The Bush-McCain torture compromise legitimizes torture. It is the first time that has happened in this country. Not in the two World Wars, Korea, the Cold War or Vietnam did the government ever seek or get the power this bill gives them.
The worst part of it is that most of the media missed it and got it wrong.
Secondly, the President in authorizing surveillance without seeking a court order has committed a crime. The Federal Communications Act criminalizes surveillance without a warrant. It is an impeachable offense. This was also totally missed by the media.
U.S. Command Declares Global Strike Capability WASHINGTON — The U.S. Strategic Command announced yesterday it had achieved an operational capability for rapidly striking targets around the globe using nuclear or conventional weapons, after last month testing its capacity for nuclear war against a fictional country believed to represent North Korea.
...CONPLAN 8022 is “a new strike plan that includes [a] pre-emptive nuclear strike against weapons of mass destruction facilities anywhere in the world,” said Hans Kristensen, a consultant for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Kristensen first published the STRATCOM press release on his Web site, nukestrat.com.
Persian Fire So now we know: Next time the fire will come in Iran. The blow will be delivered by proxy, but that will not spare the true perpetrator from the firestorm of blowback and unintended consequences that will follow. Even now, the gruesome deaths of many innocent people in many lands are growing in futurity's womb.
The Rubicon of the new war was crossed on Oct. 27. Oddly enough for this renewal of the ancient enmity between the heirs of Athens and Persia, the decisive event occurred on the edge of the Arctic Circle, at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, where a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit. This launch, scarcely noticed at the time, has accelerated the inevitable strike on Iran's nuclear facilities: Israel is now readying an attack for no later than the end of March, The Sunday Times reports.
Most Israelis Oppose Strike Against Iran: PollJudith Miller, Interrogator The Chicago Sun-Times confirmed yesterday Oscar Wilde's maxim that modern journalism is valuable because it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community when it published a story titled "N.Y. Times Reporter Named in Court Filing: Bridgeview Man Interrogated In Israel Says Miller Watched."
The Sun-Times plays up as hot news a charge by Muhammed Salah that Judith Miller witnessed his 1993 interrogation in Israel. Salah currently faces federal charges in Chicago of laundering millions of dollars over 15 years to support the terrorist organization Hamas. He wants his confession to Israeli authorities from 1993 suppressed in this prosecution, claiming that interrogators tortured it out of him, and hopes that dragging Miller into his case will help accomplish that.
So, just who is Christian Bailey? ...It was recently revealed that Bailey's company was the recipient of a $100m (£56m) contract from Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defence for buying space in Iraqi newspapers to place deliberately one-sided stories written by US "psy-ops" troops, at a time when the chaos of Iraq makes genuine journalism all but impossible and when journalists risk their lives on a daily basis to report the truth.
...Much is unclear about the Lincoln Group, its youthful executive vice-president and his string of previous companies that have left only the faintest paper trail. Indeed, Christian Bailey may not be his real name: a number of student associates said at some point during his four years that he changed his name from Yusefovich - an unlikely surname for someone called Christian.
...Many observers have been surprised Bailey, from Surrey, has been awarded such a sizable contract, give that he appears to have no experience in public relations. Indeed, since he moved to the US in the late 1990s, he has spent much of his time in private finance, working in hedge funds in San Francisco and New York.
Senate Rejects Extension of Patriot Act WASHINGTON - The Senate on Friday refused to reauthorize major portions of the USA Patriot Act after critics complained they infringed too much on Americans' privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.
In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill's Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and their allies. The final vote was 52-47.
President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Republicans congressional leaders had lobbied fiercely to make most of the expiring Patriot Act provisions permanent.
Pelosi Hails Democrats' Diverse War Stances House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday that Democrats should not seek a unified position on an exit strategy in Iraq, calling the war a matter of individual conscience and saying differing positions within the caucus are a source of strength for the party.
Pelosi said Democrats will produce an issue agenda for the 2006 elections but it will not include a position on Iraq. There is consensus within the party that President Bush has mismanaged the war and that a new course is needed, but House Democrats should be free to take individual positions, she sad.
"There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position," Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.
No voice..no position...great.Invitation to the Bomb We Spaniards should have reserved a bit of naiveté for this occasion. During the last years we have been exposed to such a digest of horrors that our conscience got jammed. Spain trembled with the destruction of the Twin Towers and its 3,000 dead; it trembled with the bombing of the Atocha Station and its 200 victims torn to pieces; it also trembled with the missiles over Baghdad and with Abu-Ghraib's tortures and trembled again with the scenes of a New Orleans turned upside down by the water and abandoned by its government. Nevertheless, much more impressive than all that "both as a question and as an image" is the zoological treatment accorded by the Spanish State to the African nationals at the iron curtain of the Melilla border with Morocco.
The gunfire, deportation and caging of thousands of persons who were asking for help - that strategy they call "migratory policy," just as Hitler used to call "demographic policy" the transfer to Auschwitz of the European Jews-de facto challenges before the eyes of the world the legitimacy, viability and justice of the political and economic order in place.
At the same time, the reaction of our politicians, our mass media and our public opinion challenges our right to the wealth, to democratic institutions and, especially, our present and future right to feel we are good. After all, the pain caused by both the 11-S and 11-M can be attributed to "wicked terrorists" just the same that the pain of Baghdad's children can be attributed to "wicked imperialists." But in Melilla there is no doubt: we have photographed the system, we have fixed forever the image of an order that has to shoot the people who ask for help, that cannot stop treating as animals the people who are hungry, which cannot even allow hospitality.
The US is now rediscovering the pitfalls of aspirational imperialism The war in Iraq has had at least one redeeming feature. Along with events in Afghanistan, it has revived serious debate into some of the most important and long-standing issues in history and politics. Type the four words "Iraq", "Afghanistan", "America" and "empire" into Google, for instance, and you get around 3.5 million hits. There are the usual mad bloggers and propaganda rants but there is also a wealth of discussion on offer that expands every day. Is the US an empire? If so, what sort of empire? Is imperialism good or bad, or sometimes both? And, of course: why has it proved so hard for America, the most formidable military and economic power the world has seen, to effect its will? The passion behind this on-screen questioning is evident. So, very often, is a limited understanding of what imperial ventures have usually involved.
Whose understanding is limited? Not the victims', certainly.Law on Teaching Rosy View of Past Is Dividing France s a great maritime and colonial power in centuries past, France relished its role in taking its culture to the far corners of the globe -- French schools, language, trade, modern medicine and various other trappings of its civilization.
But people in those places were not always happy with what accompanied the French largess, including war, slavery, torture and the eradication of their cultures.
Those competing views of history have set off an emotional debate in France and places it colonized, following passage of a law here mandating that French schools give more emphasis to the positive aspects of French colonization.
Nigerian women riot over 'indecent' bikes ban Fights broke out in the northern Nigerian city of Kano this week after women defied a ban under Islamic law forbidding men and women to travel together on "indecent" public transport.
The violence broke out after religious marshals tried to stop women riding the motorcycle taxis that zip through the city centre and to persuade them to use "approved" vehicles instead.
More than 9,000 policemen or religious marshals patrolled the streets to implement the ban, which came into force this week. In one incident, six people were wounded in clashes between motorbike-taxi riders and the police after a woman was ordered to dismount from a vehicle.
'Tis the season ...If aid is desperately required on December 15, the situation was probably just as urgent on October 15 and November 15, too. And if good cheer is admirable in December, then it should be just as commendable in May and March. What has happened is that our moral obligations have shifted as the Season of Goodwill gets under way, and this should demonstrate that there is something very wrong with our ordinary moral thinking.
rootsie on 12.17.05 @ 10:26 AM CST [
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Friday, December 16th
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 12.16.05 @ 07:42 AM CST [
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G.O.P. May Harness Arctic Drilling to Pentagon Budget
WASHINGTON - With a budget-cutting measure stymied by stiff resistance to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, Congressional Republicans began exploring Wednesday a new tactic to win approval of both $45 billion in cuts and the drilling plan.
Lawmakers and senior aides said they were seriously considering tacking the drilling proposal onto a Pentagon spending bill that is among those that must pass before Congress heads home in the next few days. The switch, they said, could clear the way for approval of the spending cuts sought by conservatives and the Arctic drilling plan that is a priority of Republicans and the Bush administration, provided they could defeat any filibuster.
"It's going to be on one bill or the other before I go home," said Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, a leading proponent of opening the Arctic plain to oil production.
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.16.05 @ 07:38 AM CST [
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Is Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears?
It may be the latest evidence of global warming: Polar bears are drowning.
Scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of their time hunting and raising their young on ice floes.
Polar bears in Alaska face melting ice floes. (Photo: Steven C. Amstrup)
In a quarter-century of aerial surveys of the Alaskan coastline before 2004, researchers from the U.S. Minerals Management Service said they typically spotted a lone polar bear swimming in the ocean far from ice about once every two years. Polar-bear drownings were so rare that they have never been documented in the surveys.
But in September 2004, when the polar ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of the northern coast of Alaska, researchers counted 10 polar bears swimming as far as 60 miles offshore. Polar bears can swim long distances but have evolved to mainly swim between sheets of ice, scientists say.
The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. "Extrapolation of survey data suggests that on the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds," the researchers say in a report set to be released today.
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.16.05 @ 07:34 AM CST [
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Coca-Cola Faces Mounting Pressure over Abusive Practices at Plants Worldwide
NEW YORK - Coca-Cola, the multinational soft drink giant, is facing the wrath of rights advocacy groups here in the United States and abroad for refusing to take responsibility for abusive practices at its bottling plants.
While a number of universities and colleges in the United States have already banned the sale of Coke products on their campuses, mounting pressure from student bodies throughout Europe is pushing hundreds of schools to terminate their contracts with the company as well.
The company is also under fire in a number of Asian and Latin American countries, where labor unions, peasant groups, and consumer associations are relentlessly campaigning to force Coca-Cola to just pack up and leave.
Last week, in India, for example, hundreds of villagers protested outside the company's bottling plant in Kala Dera in the northern state of Rajasthan. Demanding immediate closure of its plant, they charged that Coca-Cola was directly responsible for severe water shortages in the area because its continued operations had caused massive groundwater depletion and soil pollution.
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.16.05 @ 07:30 AM CST [
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Study: 11M U.S. Adults Can't Read English
WASHINGTON - About one in 20 adults in the U.S. is not literate in English, meaning 11 million people lack the skills to handle many everyday tasks, a federal study shows.
From 1992 to 2003, adults made no progress in their ability to read sentences and paragraphs or understand other printed material such as bus schedules or prescription labels.
The adult population did make gains in handling tasks that involve math, such as calculating numbers on tax forms or bank statements. But even in that area, the typical adult showed only enough skills to perform simple, daily activities.
Perhaps most sobering was that adult literacy dropped or was flat across every level of education, from people with graduate degrees to those who dropped out of high school.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 12.16.05 @ 07:26 AM CST [
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Imagining Survival
So, Mr. and Mrs. America how do we redeem ourselves? How do we "take back" our country? A first step would be stopping an illegal war started by a moral degenerate operating under the cloak of hysteria that he and his criminal comrades created within the American populace. Oh, yes, I know we are bringing democracy to the Iraqis. Oh, yes, I know we can't leave before we finish the job of "giving Iraqis their freedom". We have to stay so long as there is one more barbaric torture prison to be found (or one more Iraqi to be tortured). We have to stay so long as there is one more American military person to be wounded or killed. We can't give up while Halliburton is on a "roll". We can't give up while our mercenaries are doing so well. (Our mercenaries are making almost as much as the congressmen that allowed their president to declare the war that makes the mercenaries necessary).
onformationclearinghouse.infoJason Miller: Privatize Me...Corporatize Me.... Blackwaterize Me...Thomas Paine saw the United States as an "asylum for mankind." Sadly, under the political and social dominance of the Social Darwinists, America has become more of an "asylum for the insane". Torture, state-sponsored terrorism, illegal wars, flagrant disregard for international law, tax decreases for the wealthy, funding cuts for social safety net programs, government endorsed racism, and diasporas in the aftermath of natural disasters are but a few examples of the handiwork of the wealthy elite as they create a gross perversion of Paine's vision of the US. Not to worry though. America’s patrician class now has its own private armies to protect its gold from the proletariat they so graciously tolerate.
Recently, a company called Blackwater Lodge and Training Center, Inc. ("Blackwater") unleashed some attorneys on me for an editorial I published on Thomas Paine's Corner (my blog). The article was by another writer and I had published it under Fair Use since my blog generates no revenue. Blackwater's legal representatives threatened me with a libel suit and demanded that I depublish the article because it contained factual inaccuracies. After some research I agreed with them and removed the article from Thomas Paine's Corner. However, in the course of my research, I made some startling discoveries about the corporate mercenaries of Blackwater and their disturbing relationship with the US government, which clearly illustrates the threat America’s parasitic aristocracy poses to the poor, working and middle class of the world.
rootsie on 12.16.05 @ 07:16 AM CST [
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Able Danger officials will testify before Congress
The Pentagon, after weeks of silence, will allow participants in an intelligence cell that a year before the Sept. 11 attacks may have identified some of the ringleaders to testify before Congress. Their testimony could shed light on information that the Sept. 11 commission did not include in its report.
The Pentagon’s decision came in response to a letter Weldon sent to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld requesting that the Pentagon allow the participants in the cell, known as Able Danger, to testify in open congressional hearings.
More than half of the House members signed Weldon’s letter, among them members of the GOP leadership such as Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.); Peter King (R-N.Y.), who chairs the Homeland Security Committee; Tom Davis (R-Va.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee; and Don Young (R-Alaska), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Well we know for sure this is some useless crap then.
rootsie on 12.16.05 @ 07:12 AM CST [link]
Bush defends Iraq invasion, preemptive war doctrine
WASHINGTON (AFP) - One day before Iraq's historic parliamentary elections, US President George W. Bush defended his decision to invade that country and reserved the right to preemptive war in the future.
"In an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long," he said in a speech aimed at shoring up flagging US support for the conflict.
...Bush acknowledged that the war had sharply divided the United States and that intelligence about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons programs had turned out to be false, but he sharply rebuked "irresponsible" charges that he had deliberately misled the country.
"These charges are pure politics. They hurt the morale of our troops," he declared, saying that even countries which opposed the war agreed that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.
But US media have quoted French and German intelligence officials in recent weeks as saying that they repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, warned Washington that crucial parts of its case for war were flawed or outright false.
German intelligence officials warned their US counterparts that accounts from an Iraqi defector code-named Curveball, a critical US source for charges that Iraq possessed mobile germ weapons labs, could not be confirmed and, in many cases, were deeply suspect, The Los Angeles Times reported in November.
The same daily quoted a former senior French intelligence official on Sunday as saying that Paris tried for months to warn the CIA that there was no evidence to support a US allegation that Iraq had tried to purchase nuclear weapons material in Africa.
news.yahoo.comSaddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli SaysSaddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says.
The assertion comes as President Bush said yesterday that much of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was incorrect.
The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. "He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria," General Yaalon told The New York Sun over dinner in New York on Tuesday night. "No one went to Syria to find it."
Egypt says US ignores offer to train Iraqi troopsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Egypt has repeatedly offered to train tens of thousands of Iraqi forces but Washington ignored this offer and chose instead to criticize Cairo for not doing enough, Egypt's envoy to the United States said.
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The United States has consistently accused Arab countries, including Egypt, of not doing enough to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, but Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmy said on Thursday this criticism was unfounded.
"We have offered to train Iraqis for over two years," he told reporters at a breakfast at his residence.
Fahmy said he offered Egypt's help in troop training during discussions with officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and members of Congress but they gave no response.
"It's got to the point that I have stopped begging," he said. "It's mind-boggling," he added.
rootsie on 12.16.05 @ 07:06 AM CST [
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Thursday, December 15th
Angela Davis: "The State of California May Have Extinguished the Life of Stanley Tookie Williams, But They Have Not Managed to Extinguish the Hope for a Better World"
...ANGELA DAVIS: Well, it seems to me that we saw a very intentional politicization of this process, namely the equation of what Schwarzenegger would call lawlessness and criminality with radical political activism. It is revealing, it seems to me, that every single name he evoked by quoting the dedication from Tookie's autobiography, every single name is the name of a person of color, a black person or a Native person, and of course we have Nelson Mandela, who is a global hero, who represents to us the determination to dismantle racism and sexism and economic exploitation.
It is very frightening to me that Schwarzenegger would make such a statement, particularly in light of the assault on people's rights associated with the PATRIOT Act. This feels like an even more intense kind of McCarthyism that's happening here, and it was particularly ironic that he said that Williams is not reformed and he still sees violence and lawlessness as legitimate, as what he called a legitimate means to address societal problems. This is ironic, since Stanley Tookie Williams has publicly embraced nonviolence, and as I said this evening, when I spoke at the rally, this execution is the most outrageous example of using violence, of using state violence as a legitimate means of addressing social problems.
democracynow.org
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:51 AM CST [
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Plan could shrink New Orleans footprint
Key commission member recommends returning some areas to wetland
A key member of the commission charged with overseeing the rebuilding of New Orleans partially endorsed a proposal to shrink the city's footprint, but pulled back from a recommendation to temporarily ban development in some of the neighborhoods hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, according to the city's Times-Picayune newspaper.
Joe Canizaro, co-chairman of the city's Bring Back New Orleans planning subcommittee, said he and other commission members agree with a recommendation from the Urban Land Institute that some areas of the city should be returned to wetland, according to the newspaper. The ULI proposal would require environmental tests and hurricane-protection studies before allowing development in some neighborhoods, including the Lower 9th Ward.
Canizaro's plan would allow residents to rebuild in any part of the city for the next three years. "If a neighborhood is not developing adequately to support the services it needs to support it, we'll try to shrink it then," Canizaro told the paper. "I don't envision the elimination of neighborhoods, I see the shrinkage of neighborhoods," Canizaro said. The city would have the power to condemn property in areas that have failed to develop sufficiently to support the neighborhoods.
msnbc.msn.com
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:45 AM CST [
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Blacks likely breathe most unhealthy air
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- A dozen years after former President Clinton ordered the government to attack environmental injustices, black and poor Americans still are far more likely to breathe factory pollution that poses the greatest health risk, an Associated Press analysis found.
The AP analysis of government pollution, health and census data found that blacks are 79 percent more likely than whites to live in neighborhoods where industrial air pollution is suspected of causing the most health problems.
Residents in neighborhoods with the highest pollution health risk also tend to be poorer, less educated and more often unemployed than those elsewhere in the country, AP found.
"Poor communities, frequently communities of color but not exclusively, suffer disproportionately," said Carol Browner, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration when the scoring system was developed. "If you look at where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they're not in the upper middle class neighborhoods."
cnn.com
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:40 AM CST [
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Iraq border chief denies forged ballots seized
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The head of Iraq's border guards denied police reports on Wednesday that a tanker truck stuffed with thousands of forged ballot papers had been seized crossing into Iraq from Iran before Thursday's elections.
"This is all a lie," said Lieutenant General Ahmed al- Khafaji, the chief of the U.S.-trained force which has responsibility for all Iraqi borders.
"I heard this yesterday and I checked all the border crossings right away. The borders are all closed anyway," he told Reuters. Iraq's frontiers are closed for the period of the election.
"I contacted all the border crossing points and there was no report of any such incident."
turkishweekly.netNY Times: Police Seize Forged Ballots Headed to Iraq From Iran
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:36 AM CST [
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Iraq elections: a democratic façade for a US puppet state
The entire US-controlled political process this year—the January 30 elections for a transitional government, the drafting of a new constitution and the referendum on October 15—has been aimed at giving the veneer of legal legitimacy to the plunder of the country’s oil and gas and the formation of a puppet government that will sanction an indefinite US military presence in Iraq.
This week’s ballot is the final stage. At stake are 275 seats in the next parliament, which will sit for the next four years and elect both the president and prime minister. Each of the country’s 18 provinces has been allocated a number of seats based on population. Baghdad, for example, the most populated province, will elect 59 parliamentarians. A total of 230 will be elected in the provinces. The remaining 45 will be chosen by a national proportional method.
Even if it wanted to, the new government would have next to no ability to reverse what the US invasion and occupation has already set in motion. Iraq’s economy is devastated, with unemployment close to 50 percent, growing malnutrition, dysfunctional social services and rampant corruption. The new constitution has already placed new oil developments under the control of regional or provincial governments, which have the power to sign long-term contracts with transnational companies.
To enforce this framework, the US military and the Iraqi security forces are conducting bloody operations in areas where guerilla resistance groups are active, at the cost of hundreds of lives each month. While there is talk of withdrawing up to 20,000 American troops next year, the foreign occupation force in Iraq will remain well over 100,000 for the foreseeable future.
wsws.orgWe Vote, Then We Throw You Out12/14/05 "Asia Times" -- -- First, a quick look at the environment ahead of Thursday's elections in Iraq. Political assassinations, party headquarters burned, abductions (all largely unreported by Western corporate media). A former prime minister, Iyad Allawi - widely known in Baghdad as "Saddam without a moustache" - saying on the record that human rights in President George W Bush's Iraq are worse than they were under Saddam.
Current Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's Da'wa Party accusing Allawi of defending the occupiers. Allawi accusing Jaafari's government of corruption. Former Pentagon asset Ahmad Chalabi's campaign posters with the inscription, "We liberated Iraq."
A network of secret torture prisons and charnel houses. Fear and loathing in militia hell. American military operations to "secure peaceful voting". All traffic circulation prohibited by the occupiers (to prevent car bombings). The borders with both Syria and Jordan, as well as Baghdad's airport, all closed.
Satanic, free and fair
We all knew what some were going to say. Saddam Hussein - preparing his next coup de theater in court - declared the elections "a farce". Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers, plus four other jihadi groups, denounced them as "a satanic project", vowing to perpetuate the jihad, fighting for "an Islamic state ruled by the book [the Koran] and the traditions of Prophet Mohammed".
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:31 AM CST [
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Bush Says Iraq War Was Justified Even Though Intelligence Wrong
Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush accepted responsibility for taking the U.S. to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence while saying the invasion still was justified by the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and international terrorism.
``It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong,'' Bush said today in the final speech in a series intended to outline his Iraq strategy. ``Given Saddam's history and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision.''
Bush spoke a day before Iraqis go to the polls to elect a new parliament, a step that the administration is counting on to help stabilize the country enough that the U.S. can begin bringing some its 160,000 troops home.
Tying together his arguments from three previous speeches over the past two weeks on why the U.S. must stay engaged in Iraq, Bush said that even though the original rationale for the war turned out to be false -- that Hussein was compiling biological and chemical weapons -- the invasion was critical to the safety of the U.S.
bloomberg.com
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:21 AM CST [
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Study Shows Civilian Death Toll in Iraq More Than 100,000
...President Bush’s comments took many by surprise because the administration has said little over the past 1,000 days on how many Iraqis have died because of the war and occupation. Since Bush spoke on Monday, several officials denied the government was keeping a tally on Iraqi deaths. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said that Bush was "citing public estimates," not a government-produced figure. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable said there is no official tally of civilian deaths in Iraq. However, Venable said the U.S. military does collect data on deaths from insurgent attacks. If the government did keep close tabs on Iraqi civilian deaths, they might likely find the number is far higher than 30,000.
Last year the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet published a study estimating that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died because of the war. The study determined that the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the US-led invasion. We are joined in Washington by the lead researcher of that report.
democracynow.org
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:17 AM CST [
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Pentagon may request up to $100 billion more for wars
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is in the early stages of drafting a wartime request for up to $100 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan, lawmakers say, a figure that would push spending related to the wars toward a staggering half-trillion dollars.
Reps. Bill Young, R-Fla., chairman of the House appropriations defense panel, and John Murtha, D-Pa., senior Democrat on that subcommittee, say the military has informally told them it wants $80 billion to $100 billion in a war-spending request that the White House is expected to send Congress next year.
That would be in addition to $50 billion Congress is about to give the Pentagon for operations in Iraq for the beginning of 2006. Military commanders expect that money to last through May.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress has approved more than $300 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, including military operations, reconstruction, embassy security and foreign aid, as well as other costs related to the war on terrorism, according to the Congressional Research Service, which writes reports for Congress.
indystar.com
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:14 AM CST [
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The CIA's torture taxi
THIS IS A story about an airplane, a Boeing 737 passenger jet.
This is also a story about torture, the war on terrorism, and the Central Intelligence Agency's practice of quietly snatching suspected terrorists and transporting them to dungeons in far-off lands, where, allegedly, they're detained indefinitely – without charges in any court of law in any country – drugged, beaten, threatened, and interrogated. –These two narrative threads, as you've probably guessed by now, are interwoven. A growing body of evidence suggests the plane you're about to read about is used by CIA agents to shuttle prisoners to clandestine jails around the world. And new clues, revealed here for the first time, link this airliner to a small office in Reno, Nev. – and to one of the biggest figures in Nevada politics.
sfbg.com
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:10 AM CST [
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Family Upset Over Soldier's Body Arriving As Freight
SAN DIEGO -- There's controversy over how the military is transporting the bodies of service members killed overseas, 10News reported.
A local family said fallen soldiers and Marines deserve better and that one would think our war heroes are being transported with dignity, care and respect. It said one would think upon arrival in their hometowns they are greeted with honor. But unfortunately, the family said that is just not the case.
Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag -- greeted by a color guard.
But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners -- stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo.
10news.com
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:06 AM CST [
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The 9/11 Commission's Incredible Tales
Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93
...Standard operating procedures dictate that if an FAA flight controller notices anything that suggests a possible hijacking--if radio contact is lost, if the plane's transponder goes off, or if the plane deviates from its flight plan--the controller is to contact a superior. If the problem cannot be fixed quickly--within about a minute--the superior is to ask NORAD--the North American Aerospace Defense Command--to scramble jet fighters to find out what is going on. NORAD then issues a scramble order to the nearest Air Force base with fighters on alert. On 9/11, all the hijacked airliners occurred in NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector, which is known as NEADS. So all the scramble orders would have come from NEADS.
The jet fighters at the disposal of NEADS could respond very quickly: According to the US Air Force website, F-15s can go from "scramble order" to 29,000 feet in only 2.5 minutes, after which they can then fly over 1800 miles per hour (140). (All page numbers given parenthetically in the text are to David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions). Therefore--according to General Ralph Eberhart, the head of NORAD--after the FAA senses that something is wrong, "it takes about one minute" for it to contact NORAD, after which, according to a spokesperson, NORAD can scramble fighter jets "within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States" (140). These statements were, to be sure, made after 9/11, so we might suspect that they reflect a post-9/11 speed-up in procedures. But an Air Traffic Control document put out in 1998 warned pilots that any airplanes persisting in unusual behavior "will likely find two [jet fighters] on their tail within 10 or so minutes" (141).
The First Version of the Official Story
On 9/11, however, that did not happen. Why not? Where was the military? The military's first answer was given immediately after 9/11 by General Richard Myers, then the Acting Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mike Snyder, a spokesman for NORAD. They both said, independently, that no military jets were sent up until after the strike on the Pentagon. That strike occurred at 9:38, and yet American Airlines Flight 11 had shown two of the standard signs of hijacking, losing both the radio and the transponder signal, at 8:15. This means that procedures that usually result in an interception within "10 or so minutes" had not been carried out in 80 or so minutes.
That enormous delay suggested that a stand-down order, canceling standard procedures, must have been given. Some people started raising this possibility.
globalresearch.ca
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 07:02 AM CST [
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A Defendants' Guide to the GOP "Revolution"
...DeLay's "K Street Project," named for the Washington street where many lobbying firms have offices, built a pipeline from congressional staffs to lucrative lobbying jobs. DeLay's wife was among those hired by Abramoff.
Cozy relations between legislators and lobbyists are deeply rooted in Washington culture and big lobby firms often hire members of Congress who retire or are defeated. Former members have personal contacts and access that ordinary lobbyists don't have. Their big salaries are often in gratitude for favors delivered when they were in office. Public business is decided on golf courses and yachts, bankrolled by lobbyists and their special-interests employers and campaign contributors.
Democrats and Republicans played the game, and lobbying firms covered their bases with bipartisan hiring. A form of comity was recognized by both parties.
Gingrich's 1994 Republican "revolution" produced a different order of business in the House. Democrats were kept off some critical conference committees where key votes are taken, or were so marginalized as to be powerless.
The K Street Project punished lobbyists who retained high-profile Democratic staff. The domination of K Street by conservative Republicans has brought their clients big-time financial benefits. Now a different breed of chickens is coming home to roost, in the form of the DeLay and Abramoff scandals.
Because they were so successful at working the system, Republicans will also occupy most of the spotlight in the courtroom dramas of 2006.
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 06:56 AM CST [
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Who Will Bring Water to the Bolivian Poor?
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia - The people of this high Andean city were ecstatic when they won the "water war."
Enlarge This Image
Noah Friedman-Rudovsky for The New York Times
Half of the 600,000 people in Cochabamba, Bolivia, remain without water. Here, Edwin Ventura, 8, collects water from an outdoor tap.
Enlarge This Image
Noah Friedman-Rudovsky for The New York Times
Many in Cochabamba cannot depend on wells and get water through deliveries made two or three times a week by freelance water dealers.
After days of protests and martial law, Bechtel - the American multinational that had increased rates when it began running the waterworks - was forced out. As its executives fled the city, protest leaders pledged to improve service and a surging leftist political movement in Latin America celebrated the ouster as a major victory, to be repeated in country after country.
Today, five years later, water is again as cheap as ever, and a group of community leaders runs the water utility, Semapa.
But half of Cochabamba's 600,000 people remain without water, and those who do have service have it only intermittently - for some, as little as two hours a day, for the fortunate, no more than 14.
"I would have to say we were not ready to build new alternatives," said Oscar Olivera, who led the movement that forced Bechtel out.
Bolivia is just days away from an election that could put one of Latin America's most strident antiglobalization leaders in the presidency. The water war experience shows that while a potent left has won many battles in Latin America in recent years, it still struggles to come up with practical, realistic solutions to resolve the deep discontent that gave the movement force in the first place.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 06:50 AM CST [
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WTO: ‘Importing Food is Importing Unemployment'
...a vast majority of the developing countries, whether in Latin America, Africa or Asia have, in the first 10 years of WTO, turned into food importers. Millions of farmers have lost their livelihoods as a result of cheaper imports.
If the WTO has its way, and the developing countries fail to understand the politics that drives the agriculture trade agenda, the world will soon have two kinds of agriculture systems -- the rich countries producing staple foods for the world's 6 billion plus people, and developing countries growing cash crops like tomatoes, cut flowers, peas, sunflowers, strawberries and vegetables.
This is what happened in many of the Latin American countries that were forced to dismantle food security and diversify to cash crops as part of the conditionality that came along with structural adjustment loans. The same strategy is now being legitimized for the rest of the world under the legal framework of the WTO.
As the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have repeatedly emphasized, the dollars that developing countries earn from exporting these crops will eventually be used to buy food grains from the developed nations -- in reality, passing the reins of food security back into the hands of rich countries.
For India, a major farming country, that would mean going back to the days of a ‘ship-to-mouth' existence before it struggled to achieve food self-sufficiency on the backs of hundreds of millions of small farmers.
It is the livelihoods of these farmers, as well as the food security of the people they fed for decades, that is at stake at Hong Kong.
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 06:41 AM CST [
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Vandana Shiva Takes Fight Against Monsanto to Hong Kong
Indian environment activist Vandana Shiva and French anti-globalisation crusader Jose Bove Wednesday launched a campaign against US food and seed giant Monsanto on the sidelines of the global trade talks here.
The duo also handed a petition to officials of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to oppose the trade dispute filed by the US, Argentina and Canada under the rules of the multilateral organisation on genetically modified (GM) food.
The petition - which Shiva claimed has been signed by 135,000 citizens from over 100 countries and 740 organisations representing 60 million people - was to be given to WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, who instead sent a representative.
"The petition asks the World Trade Organisation not to undermine the rights of countries like the European Union to take appropriate measures to protect their ecology and environment from GM Food," Shiva said.
The backdrop for the short event were placards and posters that read, "WTO: Hands Off Our Food" and "Monsanto Plunders and Kills Peasants and the Planet".
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.15.05 @ 06:36 AM CST [
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Wednesday, December 14th
Aristide the Film
Review: Aristide and the Endless Revolution. 2005. Baraka Productions. 83 min. Movie site:
aristidethefilm.com Available from
firstunfeatures.comEach fact is disputed. Haiti’s President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown in a coup and kidnapped by the United States on February 29, 2004, says Aristide himself. Aristide left voluntarily, say US officials Colin Powell and Roger Noriega.
Despite the cliché that journalists seek ‘balance’, to get ‘both sides of the story’, the voices of Aristide and his Lavalas political party and movement, whose leaders have been exiled or jailed or massacred since his ouster, have been left out of most coverage of Haiti since that 2004 coup.
The world is expected to understand the events unfolding in Haiti since 2004 without hearing from the victims. Aside from skewing global opinion, the disinformation campaign in Haiti has prevented supporters of Lavalas inside Haiti from being able to talk openly about the issues. Outside of the country, supporters of democracy are left to talk on listerves and Web sites, where their words can be ignored.
For these reason, Nicolas Rossier’s film, ‘Aristide and the Endless Revolution’, is a real journalistic service to the community.
zmag.org
rootsie on 12.14.05 @ 08:22 AM CST [
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At the end of the chain, the farmers who face ruin
Seydou, dressed in a ripped T-shirt that hangs off his shoulders, looks blank when questioned about the effects of United States subsidies on his only source of income, cotton farming.
"I don't know about cotton in the US but I know cotton prices have fallen here in Burkina Faso," he says solemnly. The farmers working in the cotton fields of Burkina Faso, often in remote locations, have little knowledge of the intricacies of world markets. What they do know is the price they receive for their cotton harvests, essential for basic necessities such as medicines and school fees, is dropping fast.
The end of cotton farming in Burkina Faso and other cotton-producing west African countries is rapidly approaching. World cotton prices have dropped to a historic low because of the EU and US trade subsidies which have artificially distorted world markets.
...World cotton prices are in decline due to global over-production, fuelled by the agricultural subsidies. EU and US taxpayers and consumers pay farmers billions of dollars to overproduce products for a stagnant market. These surpluses are then dumped overseas, often in developing countries, destroying their markets and driving down world prices. The livelihood of West Africa's 12 million cotton farmers will soon be destroyed if subsidies are not slashed.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 12.14.05 @ 07:45 AM CST [
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Bush friend linked to top job in Russian oil industry
A former cabinet minister and close personal friend of George Bush may be appointed head of Russia's leading state oil company, it was reported yesterday.
Donald Evans, who was until early this year US commerce secretary, has been offered the position of head of the board of directors of Rosneft by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the respected business daily, Kommersant, reported yesterday.
If the appointment is confirmed, Mr Evans would be the second former senior foreign official to join the Kremlin's expanding energy empire. Last week, the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder accepted a job as chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline, a project to ferry gas between Russia and Germany that he helped broker.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.14.05 @ 07:39 AM CST [
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Prosecutors in DeLay Case Look Into Ties With Lobbyist
WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - Texas prosecutors in the criminal case against Representative Tom DeLay revealed in subpoenas made public Tuesday that they were investigating ties between Mr. DeLay and a lobbyist who is at the center of a bribery scandal that prompted another House Republican to resign from Congress last month.
The subpoenas sought documents from the lobbyist, Brent Wilkes, a California businessman whose lawyers have confirmed that he is one of four unnamed co-conspirators listed in the criminal charges against former Representative Randy Cunningham, the California Republican who pleaded guilty to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes.
Mr. Wilkes was close to several Republican members of Congress, including Mr. Cunningham and Mr. DeLay, Republican of Texas, who traveled as Mr. Wilkes's guest in a private jet he partly owned. There is no accusation in the subpoenas of any other tie between Mr. DeLay and Mr. Cunningham, who is facing a long prison sentence.
nytimes.comDemocrat Returning Donations From Abramoff's Tribal ClientsWASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - The ranking Democrat on the Senate committee investigating the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff announced on Tuesday that he was returning $67,000 in political contributions from Mr. Abramoff's former partners and Indian tribe clients.
The lawmaker, Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, has been accused of hypocrisy by Republicans for having not acknowledged the contributions from Mr. Abramoff's clients while at the same time sharply criticizing him in hearings of the Senate panel, the Indian Affairs Committee.
rootsie on 12.14.05 @ 07:35 AM CST [
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Katrina victims: 'Living in barns'
"We got a serious situation in St. Bernard Parish," its president, Henry "Junior" Rodriguez, told CNN on Tuesday.
"We got people living in tents and automobiles. We got people living in barns. We got people living in their houses -- in tents," he said on "American Morning."
"This is the beginning of winter. This is unacceptable."
Tuesday morning, it was 41 degrees in New Orleans.
A site with 50 to 55 trailers is operational, Rodriguez said, and another may be able to handle 45 trailers within a couple days. But the 100 or so trailers fall far short of the 12,000 trailers needed for the number of people estimated to return home, he added.
Adding to Rodriguez's frustration is the fact that 1,400 trailers are sitting unused in St. Bernard Parish. The parish ordered them from a private contractor days after the hurricane hit on August 29, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency has not agreed to pay for them.
cnn.com
rootsie on 12.14.05 @ 07:27 AM CST [
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Nuclear Roulette in the Troposhere: Another NASA Plutonium Launch
NASA is again threatening the lives of people on Earth.
On January 11, the window opens for a launch from Cape Canaveral of a rocket lofting a space probe with 24 pounds of plutonium fuel on board. Plutonium is considered the most deadly radioactive substance.
Once it separates from the rocket, the probe, on what NASA calls its New Horizons mission, would move through space powered by conventional chemical fuel.
The plutonium is in a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) that is to provide on-board electricity for the probe's instruments--a mere 180 watts when it gets to its destination of Pluto.
Until after the probe leaves the rocket and breaks from the Earth's gravitational pull, the plutonium endangers life on Earth.
Because a fatal dose of plutonium is just a millionth of a gram, anyone breathing just the tiniest particle of plutonium dispersed in an accident could die.
NASA has divided the sequence into four phases before what it calls "escape" of the probe from the Earth's gravity. It is most concerned about the launch phase.
NASA's Final Environmental Impact Statement for the New Horizons Mission (EIS) says there is "about 6 percent probability" of an accident during launch.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 12.14.05 @ 07:23 AM CST [
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Torture Inc.: Americas Brutal Prisons
Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?
They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for BBC Channel 4 . It’s terrible to watch some of the videos and realise that you’re not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying.
informationclearinghouse.infoEuropeans Outraged at Schwarzenegger
rootsie on 12.14.05 @ 07:16 AM CST [
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Robert Dreyfuss: Bush's Shiite Gang in Baghdad
More and more evidence is mounting that Iran’s ayatollahs have their hands deep into the Shiite-led government of Iraq. Astonishingly though, the Bush administration – and its allied phalanx of neoconservatives – have turned a blind eye to Iran’s influence in Iraq. That’s because the Iraqi Shiites, who run the regime in Baghdad, are supposed to be the “good guys,” i.e., the ones we are defending in Iraq. As I’ve written before, the United States has 160,000 troops in Iraq serving as the Praetorian guard for that Shiite regime. We’re killing hundreds of Sunnis all over western Iraq on their behalf.
Before we get to the latest reports of more torture prisons run by the Shiites, along with death squads, consider the following items from the news.
Knight Ridder, perhaps the single best news organization covering the war in Iraq and its political fallout, carried an important exchange in which the head of the Badr Brigade, the paramilitary force backed by Iran, flatly admits that his 20,000-strong secret army – which is the arm of the ruling Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – is funded by Iran:
politician Ayad Allawi. "Allawi receives money from America, from the CIA, but nobody talks about that. All they talk about is our funding from Iran," he said, raising his voice. "We are funded by some (Persian) Gulf countries and the Islamic Republic of Iran. We don't hide it."
news.yahoo.comShia relish chance to rule as Iraqis prepare to vote"I expect the Shia religious parties will get about 110 to 115 seats in the new parliament," said one political observer in Baghdad. "They will be in a commanding position." He ticked off their advantages. The largest party in the coalition is the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) under Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, which already controls provincial councils in nine out of 18 Iraqi provinces. It has its powerful militia, the Badr Organisation, and is backed by Iran.
rootsie on 12.14.05 @ 07:00 AM CST [
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Tuesday, December 13th
If a Black Man Dies in America, Does It Make a Sound?
Williams was executed by lethal injection at 12:35am today....Most of those who support his state sponsored murder do not live in war torn regions of the Golden State of California. Thus it is difficult for these privileged people to understand the benefits of Stan's contributions on behalf of non-violence. However, because blacks are sentenced to death twice as frequently as whites who've been convicted of the same crime it appears that this may be more than a misunderstanding.
If a young black man is shot in South Central does it make a sound in Thousand Oaks?
counterpunch.orgMumia Abu Jamal--Tookie: From Chaos to Consciousness..."My detractors in the media and elsewhere have questioned my redemption. Their doubt is driven largely by my open apology (....at http://www.tookie.com) to Black folks and others who might have been offended by the fact that I helped create the Crips youth gang in Los Angeles 34 years ago. My detractors argue that I could not be redeemed because I have not apologized to the family members of the victims that I was convicted of killing.
"But please allow me to clarify. I will never apologize for capital crimes that I did not commit -- not even to save my life. And I did not commit the crimes for which I was sentenced to be executed by the State of California.
"Being a condemned prisoner, I am viewed among the least able to qualify as a promoter of redemption and of peace. But the most wretched among society can be redeemed, find peace and reach out to others to lift them up. Redemption cannot be faked or intellectualized. It must be subjective, experienced, and shared. In the past redemption was an alien concept to me. But from 1988 to 1994, while I lived in solitary confinement, I embarked on a transitional path toward redemption. I underwent years of education, soul-searching, edification, spiritual cultivation, and fighting to transcend my inner demons.
"Subsequently, the redeeming process for me symbolized the end of a bad beginning--and a new start.” [From: *The New Abolitionist*, Aug. '05, p. 2]
rootsie on 12.13.05 @ 07:39 AM CST [
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After 14 Weeks, Evacuees Settle Into 14th Home
BATON ROUGE, La., Dec. 8 - The small room where Tracy Jackson, Jerel Brown and their four young children share a twin bed and thin mattress on the floor is the 14th place they have laid their heads since Hurricane Katrina struck just over 14 weeks ago.
Five shelters. Six hotel rooms. Twelve days in the home of a good Samaritan in a tiny Louisiana town where they were the only black people. Six weeks in Durham, N.C., in the two-bedroom apartment that a church found for Mr. Brown's mother after the storm, where no buses ran nearby and a cab to Wal-Mart cost $10.
And, since shortly before Thanksgiving, this dark room decorated with a Cinderella princess poster in a shotgun shack, where nearly all they have is packed in a plastic tub and several suitcases stacked on top of each other in the cramped closet.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 12.13.05 @ 07:34 AM CST [
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Richard Pryor Wasn't Crazy
Only twice can I remember an entertainer agitating audience members to the point that they stormed out of a performance or sat stone silent. Richard Pryor was that entertainer. The first time he did it was at a concert I attended on New Year's Eve at a small club in Hollywood. Pryor cut loose with a bitter, expletive laced, diatribe on black and white relations. He aimed his sharpest barbs at the whites. He needled, hectored, and browbeat them for their racial sins. Midway through his rant, the predictable happened. A trickle of whites made a beeline for the door. Pryor, nonplussed by the sound of their marching feet, didn't relent from his verbal tongue lash. The trickle quickly turned into a stamped. Even then Pryor didn't miss a beat he continued to hurl barbs at their backs.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 12.13.05 @ 07:30 AM CST [
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Chad Backs Out of Pledge to Use Oil Wealth to Reduce Poverty
...In exchange for World Bank loans to build a 670-mile underground pipeline through Cameroon to export its oil, the Chadian government passed a law requiring that almost all of the money it earns on oil exports be spent for poverty reduction and that 10 percent be put aside as a "future generations fund," to leave something behind once the estimated one billion barrels of oil have been exhausted.
But in October, Chad's government abruptly announced at a meeting with the World Bank in N'Djamena, the capital, that it plans to alter that law and funnel more money into its general budget and increase spending on security.
"In the World Bank's view, these modifications alone will fail to provide a lasting solution to the recurring financial problems that Chad faces," the statement said. "To the contrary, they threaten to undermine the objectives of socioeconomic development, poverty reduction, accountability and transparency that guided World Bank Group and other international support for the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project."
nytimes.comIt's an open secret that Wolfowitz is a disciple of Chavez...
rootsie on 12.13.05 @ 07:24 AM CST [
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Revenge attacks bring second night of race violence to Sydney
Australia was last night in the grip of its worst race clashes since independence, with youths battering cars and shattering shop windows as violence spread through Sydney's suburbs for a second day.
The attacks came in retaliation for Sunday's violence, in which 5,000 people rampaged across Cronulla beach chanting racist slogans, leaving more than 40 police officers injured. Members of the crowd had wrapped themselves in the Australian flag and chanted: "No more Lebs [Lebanese]", attacking men and women of Middle Eastern appearance. Several victims were evacuated in police vans.
...But Mr Howard denied there was any "underlying racism" behind the events.
guardian.co.uk...except for the vicious racism that established the country in the first place...
rootsie on 12.13.05 @ 07:17 AM CST [
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"Most Wanted" Corporate Human Rights Violators of 2005
This list of "MOST WANTED" corporate criminals gives you information about the abusive behavior of this year's top fourteen worst corporations, tells you who is responsible, and how to connect with and support people who are doing something about it. The more you know, the less these corporations can continue their abuses out of public eyesight: so share this information with your friends, get on the phone with the CEOs themselves, and exercise your rights as a citizen and consumer today.
globalexchange.orgThey bleat about the free market, then hold out their begging bowlsNever underestimate the self-pity of the ruling classes. Since Labour took office in 1997 the Confederation of British Industry has been engaged in one long whinge. It doesn't matter that our taxes are among the lowest and our regulations among the weakest in the developed world. It doesn't matter that the rich are richer than they have ever been. The CBI is the monster with a thousand stomachs that will never be satisfied.
In the submission it made to the chancellor's pre-budget report, it demanded that the government spend less on everything except business. The state should cut its planned spending on health, social security and local authorities, and use some of the savings to protect and enhance its "support and advisory services for trade and businesses". Our higher-education budget should be used to supply free research for corporations. The regional development agencies should "expand their activities to support more extensive business-to-business networking and collaboration". Further road taxes should be abandoned, and the climate-change levy "should be frozen", but the government should help businesses by building more roads and airports. This is what the CBI means by free enterprise.
How Abramoff Spread the Wealth
rootsie on 12.13.05 @ 07:06 AM CST [
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The Syrian Gambit Unravels
The effort to demonize Syria and, in effect, Saddamize its ruler, Bashar al-Assad, has run up against a brick wall: the recantation of the prime witness, who says he was bribed, intimidated, and tortured into going along with the narrative being sold by UN prosecutor Mehlis – that Syrian intelligence pulled off the Feb. 14 assassination of Lebanese entrepreneur and politician Rafik Hariri in Beirut. The New York Times reports:
"Hussam Taher Hussam, said he had been held in Lebanon by supporters of Saad Hariri, the son of the former prime minister, and subjected to torture and drug injections to force him to testify. Saad Hariri, he said, offered him $1.3 million if he would lie about senior Syrian officials. …
"He said Mr. Hariri and his associates had asked him to tell investigators that he had seen a truck used in the assassination at a Syrian military camp, and to present false evidence implicating Maher Assad, the younger brother of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and Asef Shawkat, the president's brother-in-law, in the killing in February."
antiwar.com
rootsie on 12.13.05 @ 07:00 AM CST [
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Clinton praises Israel as Mideast ally
NEW YORK — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton last night called Israel a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, supported its need for a security barrier and called on the Palestinian Authority to crack down on the terrorism that threatens both Israel and the Palestinians' hope for a brighter future.
Clinton's strong pro-Israel speech came before a particularly receptive audience, more than 700 attendees at Yeshiva University's 81st annual Hanukkah Dinner and Convocation at the Waldorf-Astoria, where she was the keynote speaker after receiving an honorary degree. She said the futures of both the United States and Israel are intertwined, with "bonds forged in a common struggle for human rights, democracy and freedom."
"That bond is rooted in fundamental beliefs and values about the dignity of men and women and the right to live without fear or repression," Clinton said. "Israel is not only our ally; it is a beacon of what a democracy can and should be."
thejournalnews.comEU shelves East Jerusalem report over fear of alienating IsraelA controversial report that accuses Israel of rushing to annexe Arab areas of East Jerusalem was shelved by European foreign ministers in Brussels yesterday out of sensitivity to Israel.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, persuaded ministers to drop the report when he warned that Europe's influence over Israel would be severely undermined if it were to be published.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, whose diplomats in East Jerusalem drafted the report as part of Britain's EU presidency, announced the climbdown at a meeting of EU foreign ministers. "The political landscape has altered within Israel - there is a general election in a few months time," he said of Ariel Sharon's decision to form a new political party ahead of elections on March 28. "So we thought it was appropriate not to endorse or to publish the document, but instead to continue to make representations about our concerns in the normal way."
rootsie on 12.13.05 @ 06:51 AM CST [
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Monday, December 12th
Carrying the 'White Man's Burden' in Iraq
One of the many rarely spoken reasons why conservatives in Washington won't let us leave Iraq is the old notion of civilizing a primitive nation.
Last week, on the precious real estate of the right's flagship, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Iraq war-hawk Sen. Joe Lieberman (D?-CT) let slip another unspoken reason why we remain in Iraq more than two and a half years after achieving our stated goal of "disarming" Saddam Hussein.
Lieberman wrote that the Iraqis are on the brink of transitioning "from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." That is, "unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn."
It's noteworthy that Lieberman portrayed the old government as "primitive," despite the fact that we were talked into attacking Iraq because it had what President Bush called the "deadliest" weapons "known to mankind." They were, presumably, quite modern.
alternet.org
rootsie on 12.12.05 @ 08:01 AM CST [
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'Integrity' Tops Web Dictionary's Lookups
...Filibuster. Refugee. Tsunami. Each was among the dictionary publisher's 10 most frequently looked-up words among some 7 million users of its online site.
But topping the list is a word that some say gives insight into the country's collective concern about its values: Integrity.
The noun, formally defined as a ``firm adherence to a code'' and ``incorruptibility,'' has always been a popular one on the Springfield-based company's Web site, said Merriam-Webster president John Morse. But this year, the true meaning of integrity seemed to be of extraordinary concern. About 200,000 people sought its definition online.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.12.05 @ 07:45 AM CST [
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Two countries, one booming, one struggling: which one followed the free-trade route?
...The Harvard economist Dani Rodrik is one trade sceptic. Take Mexico and Vietnam, he says. One has a long border with the richest country in the world and has had a free-trade agreement with its neighbour across the Rio Grande. It receives oodles of inward investment and sends its workers across the border in droves. It is fully plugged in to the global economy. The other was the subject of a US trade embargo until 1994 and suffered from trade restrictions for years after that. Unlike Mexico, Vietnam is not even a member of the WTO.
So which of the two has the better recent economic record? The question should be a no-brainer if all the free-trade theories are right - Mexico should be streets ahead of Vietnam. In fact, the opposite is true. Since Mexico signed the Nafta (North American Free Trade Agreement) deal with the US and Canada in 1992, its annual per capita growth rate has barely been above 1%. Vietnam has grown by around 5% a year for the past two decades. Poverty in Vietnam has come down dramatically: real wages in Mexico have fallen.
Rodrik doesn't buy the argument that the key to rapid development for poor countries is their willingness to liberalise trade. Nor, for that matter, does he think boosting aid makes much difference either. Looking around the world, he looks in vain for the success stories of three decades of neo-liberal orthodoxy: nations that have really made it after taking the advice - willingly or not - of the IMF and the World Bank.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.12.05 @ 07:39 AM CST [
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Ex-Marine leader poses hard questions about war
..."Occupation breeds resentment," he said. "When you have a boot on someone's neck, they don't appreciate it."...Within the first days of the invasion in 2003, the U.S. military dropped leaflets in Iraq: "Surrender and be part of the new Iraq."
"It was a brilliant success," said Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine commander who participated in that first campaign.
Then, as the operation began to heat up, the military dropped "humanitarian rations," which did not include pork or chemical heater packs, which some in Afghanistan had ingested to their great peril. The rations came in bright yellow boxes so they could be seen easily.
This won the hearts of many, Fick said.
Then the military began dropping cluster bombs, some of which failed to explode upon impact. They came in bright yellow packages, too.
charleston.net
rootsie on 12.12.05 @ 07:36 AM CST [
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Incalculable pain
12/10/05 "Salon.com" -- -- A group of seven House Democrats wrote President Bush this week, accusing the Pentagon of underreporting casualties in Iraq.
It's a shocking charge. The letter writers argue that Pentagon casualty reports show only a sliver of the injuries, mostly physical ones from bombs or bullets. But war doesn't work like that, the Democrats declare, adding that the reports skip a horrible panoply of accidents, illness, disease and mental trauma.
"We are concerned that that the figures that were released to the public by your administration do not accurately represent the true toll that this war has taken on the American people," the group wrote Bush on Dec. 7. The Dems are right.
Pentagon casualty reports show 2,390 service members dead from Iraq and Afghanistan and over 16,000 wounded. By far the vast majority of the wounded and dead are from Iraq.
But by Dec. 8, 2005, the military had evacuated another 25,289 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries or illnesses not caused directly by enemy bullets or bombs, according to the U.S. Transportation Command. That statistic includes everything from serious injuries in Humvee wrecks or other accidents to more routine illnesses that could be unrelated to field battles.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.12.05 @ 07:31 AM CST [
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Racial Violence Shocks Australian City
...Some 5,000 white youths, wrapped in Australian flags and chanting racist slurs, fought with police, attacked people of Arab appearance and assaulted a pair of paramedics at Cronulla beach in southern Sydney, police said. Police fought back with batons and pepper spray.
Prime Minister John Howard condemned the violence, but said he did not believe racism was widespread in Australia.
breitbart.com
rootsie on 12.12.05 @ 07:27 AM CST [
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The. Biggest. Scandal. Ever! Phony Front Companies Cycle Millions to GOP! House Staffer, DELAY
The Duke Cunningham scandal goes much deeper than just the $2.4 million in bribes being reported by the media. There is a lot the media is not telling you.
Ever wonder why the Republicans have SO much money in every national election?
And what did the Dukester do to get his Rolls-Royce, anyway? Whose Lear Jet was he flying around in?
If you were a totally crooked neo-con former CIA financier Republican who hangs with the corrupt Delay-Abramoff crowd, what would be the most unethical, diabolical way to funnel SO much money to the Republican Party and neo-con schemes that you could take back the government from the Democrats?
Easy!
With your corrupt Republican buddies, form a slew of your own brand-new Defense Companies, submit bids on things the Pentagon never even asked for to the Delay/Cunningham network and Bingo!--those contributions to the GOP and K Street will flow in like never before. You can then even give to Presidential candidates like George W. Neo-Con.
Then you and your criminal gang take over the United States of America with your ill-gotten gains. Once in power, you can use your connections to weasel your way iuto intelligence agency contracts so you can help said Neo-Cons cook up a case for the Iraq War by a phony analysis of some aluminum tubes. The War on Terra is on!
dailykos.com
rootsie on 12.12.05 @ 07:19 AM CST [
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Sunday, December 11th
Cost of War
Below is a running total of the U.S. taxpayer cost of the Iraq War. The number is based on Congressional appropriations.
nationalpriorities.org
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:46 AM CST [
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Drowned city cuts its poor adrift
...When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans it was the city's poor - almost exclusively African Americans - who were left to fend for themselves as the city drowned in a lake of toxic sludge. Now, three months on, the same people have been abandoned once again by a reconstruction effort that seems determined to prevent them from returning. They are the victims of a devastating combination of forced evictions, a failure to reopen the city's public house projects, rent gouging and - as in the case of Mildred - a decision to write off whole neighbourhoods.
They are victims too of a reconstruction effort that, while its funding remains stalled in Congress, and lacking proper leadership, has been left to the care of the private sector with little interest in the city's poor. As a rapacious free market has come to dominate the rebuilding of the Louisiana city, it has seen spiralling prices and the influx of property speculators keen to cash in on the disaster. The result is
one of the most shocking pieces of urban planning that black and poor America has seen: reconstruction as survival of the wealthiest.guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:42 AM CST [
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The fix is in: Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran
ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.
timesonline.co.ukBibi’s Election Bluff: Iran Attack As Livia Rokach (daughter of Israel Rokach, Minister of the Interior in the government of Moshe Sharett, second prime minister of Israel) spelled out in her book, Israel’s Sacred Terrorism, the “Israeli political /military establishment never seriously believed in an Arab threat to the existence of Israel. On the contrary, it sought and applied every means to exacerbate the dilemma of the Arab regimes after the 1948 war. The Arab governments were extremely reluctant to engage in any military confrontation with Israel, yet in order to survive they needed to project to their populations and to the exiled Palestinians in their countries some kind of reaction to Israel’s aggressive policies and continuous acts of harassment. In other words, the Arab threat was an Israeli-invented myth which for internal and inter-Arab reasons the Arab regimes could not completely deny, though they constantly feared Israeli preparations for a new war.” Bibi Netanyahu, as a staunch Jabotinsky Zionist, is playing this old game with Iran.
Of course, Bibi will not go it alone—he has the support and goading (not that he needs much) of the American dual loyalty neocons, the Zionist mafia currently in control of U.S. foreign policy. “The ultimate neocon goal is a U.S. war with Iran over the nuclear issue,” writes Andrew I. Killgore for the Washington Report On Middle Eastern Affairs, “That would serve to postpone indefinitely Washington’s attention to the Palestine question. In ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm,’ the 1996 white paper prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by the neocons/Zionists Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith, the authors envisaged America fighting Israel’s enemies in the Middle East. It contained not a word about the consequences for the United States—raising a question about the judgment, if not the loyalty, of the three authors.”
Zia ul-Haq Mossad Hit is Non-News in America...The one unarguable fact is that no serious, conclusive, or even comprehensive inquiry into the crash has been undertaken in the United States, although one of its top diplomats, Arnold Raphel, and an American general were killed—and in an Americanbuilt aircraft. Congress held a few hearings, but the FBI was kept away from the case for a year. No official report was made public. Indeed, a file in the National Archives containing about 250 pages of documents on the event is still classified secret.
Classified secret because the U.S. government knows damn well who killed President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, Arnold Raphel, and an American general—the Israelis, the same Israelis who attacked the USS Liberty and killed 34 US seamen and wounded 171 out of a crew of 297. “Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident,” Eric S. Margolis quotes James Bamford from his book Body of Secrets. “Why?” asks Margolis. “Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this ‘third rail’ issue.”
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:38 AM CST [
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Chile Votes for President With a Woman Ahead and the Right Divided
SANTIAGO, Chile, Dec. 10 - Chileans go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president, and for the first time in their country's turbulent political history, the front-running candidate is a woman.
She is Michelle Bachelet, 54, a former defense minister and health minister who has become the standard-bearer of the center-left coalition of Socialists and Christian Democrats that has been in power here since Gen. Augusto Pinochet's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1990. She is also a doctor, a former political prisoner and exile and the daughter of a prominent general who was convicted of treason, tortured and died in prison shortly after General Pinochet seized power in 1973.
nytimes.com
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:27 AM CST [
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Carol Thatcher: 'I partly blame Mark for Mummy's anguish'
Carol Thatcher yesterday revealed that her mother, Baroness Thatcher, the former prime minister, is suffering from a deteriorating memory that has wiped out the present, while sharpening her recall of wartime events.
In an frank insight into the Thatcher family, Carol - who recently chewed kangaroo testicles on the way to being crowned Queen of the Jungle in the game show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! - also launched a bitter attack on her disgraced businessman brother, Mark, blaming his escapades for aggravating their mother's decline.
Lady Thatcher, Carol reveals, is now "very frail". "She cannot remember the beginning of the sentence by the time she reaches the end." According to Carol, Lady Thatcher, 80, is now far more able to remember her Spam recipes from the 1940s than absorb and retain new information.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:19 AM CST [
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Choking the Internet: How much longer will your favorite sites be on line?
...Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated by it.
In this case, “it,” is what privacy and computer experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the web has been heavily censored in countries around the world. That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening right here in America. The agreement by the Congress to extend an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship controls on the web.
axisoflogic.com
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:15 AM CST [
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American hunger: Are scientists lying?
...The basics: the Fed has surveyed 60,000 American families. It found 88.1% to be “food secure” – they don’t worry about getting food. But 11.9% are “food insecure” – sometimes they don’t know if they can afford food, but by doing without medications or delaying the rent they avoid hunger. That category is 13.5 million households. Finally 3.9%, or 4.4 million American households, sometimes go hungry for lack of money.
The statistics also show a 14.7% increase in hunger in one year – as we enter another year of recovery from the recession.
The interior numbers show that the South and the West are hungrier, that Blacks and Hispanics are more vulnerable, that households headed by single women are more vulnerable – and, of course, the poor. (1)
America is the biggest food producer of the world. We ship gargantuan piles of it to hungry foreign countries. Fifty four percent of the world’s exported corn is from the United States. (2)
A separate survey last year in Los Angeles found 2.9 million in California suffer food insecurity or hunger – some 10% of San Fernando Valley folks are at risk of not getting enough to eat, and if compared by race, Blacks are most at risk, then Whites, then Hispanics. Among low-income adults the food risk percentages grow huge, with Latinos leading at 38.2%. The poor always say high rents are the single biggest drain on what money they have; the homeless daily have to choose between a motel room and food. In California, food insecurity has increased 16% over two years. (3)
California is the biggest food producing state.
opednews.com
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:12 AM CST [
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'We're trapped ... books free our minds'
Nadeen cradles her folder. She carefully lays it on the table and takes out four books, a notebook, a pencil and what looks like a passport. The 'passport', she says, contains a list of the books she has read recently.
She enjoys holding the books and turning them around in her hands and pointing out characters.
Nadeen Hawareen, aged seven, from Ramallah is one of thousands of Palestinian children who are offered lessons, books and activities by the Tamer Institute. She has been taught to use the books to trigger her imagination. She can paint what happens in her books or act out scenes with her friends.
Tamer was founded in 1989 during the first intifada, when Palestinian children needed an education despite school closures and curfews. The Israeli army, surprised by the Palestinian protest, took brutal measures to regain control, breaking the bones of stone throwers and closing Palestinian areas.
Jehan Helou, the institute's director, said: 'Local communities and civil society tried to find ways of compensating for the closure of schools to ensure that a generation did not grow up illiterate. It tried to be informal, in contrast to the traditional style in schools, and to encourage the seeking of knowledge through reading, creative writing, drama and art.'
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:08 AM CST [
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Thousands Protest Against WTO in Hong Kong
...''Junk WTO,'' they chanted. ''Our world is not for sale.''
Police have been busy securing neighborhoods around the meeting venue, putting up mesh on buildings and blocking off streets to prevent the violence that has marred past WTO summits.
Members of the militant Korean Peasants League held up a banner that said, ''This hamburger is made of people's meat. Can you enjoy it?'' The sign showed a hamburger made of hands and feet. The group opposes further opening South Korea's market to agricultural imports.
British activist Tom Grundy was dressed like a chicken and held a sign that said, ''WTO: more dangerous than chicken flu.''
''We need to raise awareness of the true intention of the WTO. It's undemocratically elected. It undermines and overrides any law a country wants to bring to protect workers and the environment,'' he said.
Activists with the Indonesian Migrants' Workers Union were carrying a giant red and brown spider with a monster's head, which they said symbolized the WTO. They chanted ''Sink WTO now!'' Other demonstrators pounded on drums and clanged cymbals.
One Hong Kong protester posed as a slave master with a whip, while another wore a pig's mask to portray an exploitative employer.
Another group wheeled along lifesize statues of emaciated people, trying to make the point that farm subsidies in wealthy countries contribute to world hunger by keeping poor nations from selling their farm goods, according to a leaflet from a group that called itself the Danish Association for International Cooperation.
Members of the Indian farmers' group Tamil Nadu Dalit Women's Movement chanted, ''WTO out of agriculture.'' The group's spokeswoman, Fatima Bernad, said that opening India's market to imports would be devastating for farmers.
nytimkes.com
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 11:02 AM CST [
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Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis Issue Declaration for US Pullout
12/10/05 "Zaman" -- -- As the presence of foreign troops in Iraq is under debate, the largest Shiite and Sunni groups issued a declaration on Friday demanding a deadline announcement for the US pullout.
The declaration condemns terrorism, violence, kidnapping and murders; It also provides a legal aspect to insurgency, and vows not to normalize relations with Israel.
It was signed by radical Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, the Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, the Deputy Prime Minister, Ahmed Celebi, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and supporters of the Sunni Iraqi Common Front, among others. The Front, in control of the Duleimi tribe, is very popular with the Sunnis ahead of the December 15 elections. It is expected to win a large portion of Sunni votes owing to the inclusion of the former president of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, Faruq Abdurrahman, as a member of the Sunni front. The Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, the largest Shiite group, has also signed the declaration, which attaches special importance to the document as well.
informationclearinghouse.infoIf America Left Iraq: The case for cutting and runningIf the people the U.S. military is ostensibly protecting want it to go, why do the soldiers stay? The most common answer is that it would be irresponsible for the United States to depart before some measure of peace has been assured. The American presence, this argument goes, is the only thing keeping Iraq from an all-out civil war that could take millions of lives and would profoundly destabilize the region. But is that really the case?
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 10:59 AM CST [
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Laureate urges ban on nuclear weapons
...'The hard part is how do we create an environment in which nuclear weapons - like slavery or genocide - are regarded as a taboo and a historical anomaly?'
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 10:56 AM CST [
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US government retreats on Padilla case
12/10/05 -- -- WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. government, in an unusual retreat, urged a federal appeals court on Friday to set aside its ruling that allowed the United States to hold an American citizen as an enemy combatant without being charged.
In a filing to the U.S. Appeals Court in Richmond, Virginia, Justice Department lawyers said that since Jose Padilla -- who was held by the U.S. military for more than three years as an enemy combatant -- has been indicted by a civilian court in Florida, the case regarding his military custody was moot.
As a result, the government said the court should go ahead and set aside its Sept. 9 ruling that allowed Padilla to be held by the military without charge.
That ruling had been seen as a significant victory and a legal precedent for the administration in its war on terrorism and its controversial policy of holding enemy combatants in prison for long periods without charges.
In the filing on Friday, the Justice Department lawyers also urged the court to approve the request to transfer Padilla to civilian custody so he can face trial in Florida. They said Padilla once lived in Florida and became involved with the other people named in his indictment there.
The appeals court had delayed Padilla's transfer to civilian custody until the government explained why it used different facts to justify Padilla's military detention from those included in last month's indictment that charged Padilla with conspiracy to murder and aiding terrorists abroad.
The government's filing said prosecutors had the right to limit charges in the indictment, particularly if that would allow them to avoid "sensitive evidentiary issues" that could implicate national security.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 10:53 AM CST [
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Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive
The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company.
In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked outside, ready for the next crisis.
The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden.
"We call our stuff information and the enemy's propaganda," said Col. Jack N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, during a tour in June. Even in the Pentagon, "some public affairs professionals see us unfavorably," and inaccurately, he said, as "lying, dirty tricksters."
nytimes.com
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 10:49 AM CST [
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Republicans sinking in sleaze
A DECADE ago Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolutionaries seized control of Congress after 40 years of Democrat rule by promising to end the culture of graft and corruption on Capitol Hill.
Today, after a string of indictments, scandals and a criminal investigation that threatens to implicate dozens of politicians next year, the tables have turned full circle. It is now President Bush’s Republicans who are seen as the party of sleaze.
...Since the summer, leading Republicans have been hit by a steady stream of scandals.
In September Tom DeLay, one of the most powerful politicians in America, had to step down as leader of the House of Representatives after being indicted for violating election finance laws. He is vigorously contesting the charges.
Bill Frist, the Republican leader of the Senate, is also under investigation over insider trading allegations involving the sale of his stock in a healthcare company. Mr Frist has denied any wrongdoing.
How the Bush Administration led the country into the Iraq war, and Democrat accusations that the White House manipulated prewar intelligence, then dominated much of October and November after the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, for his role in the Valerie Plame CIA-leak affair. Mr Libby was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, and he too has pleaded not guilty.
This week Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor leading the CIA-leak investigation, convened a new grand jury to investigate further the role of Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s chief political adviser, in the Plame affair. The move suggests that Mr Fitzgerald may yet bring charges against Mr Rove.
Meanwhile, Randy “Duke” Cunningham resigned from the House of Representatives two weeks ago in one of the most spectacular cases of political corruption in recent years.
Mr Cunningham, a Republican congressman since 1991 and member of the House Defence Appropriations committee, admitted accepting $2.4 million (£1.4 million) in bribes from defence contractors, including a Rolls-Royce and a $7,200 antique Louis-Philippe commode.
But of greatest concern to White House strategists is a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice into a Republican lobbyist named Jack Abramoff that could lead to the indictment of several politicians — mostly Republican — next year.
timesonline.co.ukHouse Democrats Redouble Wooing of K Street A House Democratic project designed to dip into deep K Street wallets entered its second phase of the 2006 cycle Tuesday, as a group of prominent moderate Members enlisted business donors to shell out thousands of dollars to help the party’s top-tier candidates.
rootsie on 12.11.05 @ 10:45 AM CST [
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Saturday, December 10th
Heads roll at Veterans Administration: Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed
Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War.
Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.”
Bernklau continued, “This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.”
He added, “Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!” The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.
sfbayview.com
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 08:17 AM CST [
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Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness
...Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.
Advocates have circulated draft guidelines and have begun to conduct systematic studies. While the proposal is gaining traction, it is still in the early stages of being considered by the professionals who decide on new diagnoses.
If it succeeds, it could have huge ramifications on clinical practice, employment disputes and the criminal justice system. Perpetrators of hate crimes could become candidates for treatment, and physicians would become arbiters of how to distinguish "ordinary prejudice" from pathological bias.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 08:07 AM CST [
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Reality show makes contestants swap race to explore US bigotry
...
The premise is that two families live under the same roof in the Los Angeles suburb of Tarzana and essentially swap racial identities. The Sparks family of Atlanta undergo three to five hours of make-up every day to morph from black to white, while the Wurgels of Santa Monica emerge from their own heavy treatment by one of Hollywood's top make-up artists looking plausibly black.
The series has more serious credentials than most: its producers include an award-winning reality documentarian called RJ Cutler and the actor and rapper Ice Cube. Their intent, it seems, is less sensationalist than it is deeply political. "The loud message of the show is that we are a divided nation," Mr Cutler told reporters recently. "But we can come together if we're willing to talk about our differences and work to see the world through the eyes of other people."
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 07:56 AM CST [
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Quake victims face second wave of death in the snow
Still reeling from the devastating earthquake in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, miserable survivors huddle in crowded quarters, preparing for the onset of a Himalayan winter. In some Kashmiri villages, a new calamity is unfolding, with nearly half of them suffering skin diseases, respiratory problems or other cold-related illnesses, health officials say.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 07:50 AM CST [
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US terror watchlist 80,000 names long
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A watchlist of possible terror suspects distributed by the US government to airlines for pre-flight checks is now 80,000 names long, a Swedish newspaper reported, citing European air industry sources.
The classified list, which carried just 16 names before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington had grown to 1,000 by the end of 2001, to 40,000 a year later and now stands at 80,000, Svenska Dagbladet reported.
Airlines must check each passenger flying to a US destination against the list, and contact the US Department of Homeland Security for further investigation if there is a matching name.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 07:46 AM CST [
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Blast off! We can hit Iran, warns Sharon
IN the week when Israel successfully test-fired its latest Arrow rocket, Ariel Sharon hinted that military action could halt Iran's nuclear programme.
"Such a capability exists," the Israeli prime minister said.
Sharon added that Israel would not sit idly by if diplomacy fails.
"Israel, and not just Israel, cannot accept a situation in which Iran has nuclear weapons," he said.
"Israel is not helpless and is taking all the steps it needs to be taking."
Foreign experts speculate that Israel, which bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981, could take similar action against Iran if it believes the Islamic republic is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week joined the clamour for a pre-emptive strike on Iran.
"I will continue the tradition established by Menachem Begin, who did not allow Iraq to develop such a nuclear threat against Israel, and by a daring and courageous act gave us two decades of tranquillity," Netanyahu said. "I believe that this is what Israel has to do."
jewishtelegraph.co.uk
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 07:42 AM CST [
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Iraq war debate enters new phase
...Beneath this rhetoric lies a theology declared heretical in the early centuries of Christianity: Manichaeism from a third century teacher, Mani. Manichaens of every age divide the world simply and starkly between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and urge the former to stamp out the latter. Appealing in its simplicity, Manichaeism is disastrous in reality. Early Christians regarded Manichaeism as heretical precisely because it blinded people to their own capacity for evil and encouraged gross self-deception.
After the Soviet Union imploded (in part due to its own military excesses), and 9/11 stunned Americans, these same politically active religious conservatives were quick to substitute Islam for communism. Falwell and Robertson recycled old lines with a new infidel. Franklin Graham, son of Billy, denounced Islam as "a very evil and wicked religion." Southern Baptist President Jack Graham declared, "Satan is the ultimate terrorist" and "this is a war between Christians and the forces of evil, by whatever name they choose to use." A crusade theory of warfare marched on, giving sanction to a new stratagem, "preventive war."
seattlepi.nwsource.comThe Iron Fist of Jesus One of the rationalizations for the illegal occupation of Iraq (and the murders of over one hundred thousand innocent Iraqi civilians) is that the United States is engaged in a struggle of "good versus evil". In spite of repeated heinous acts committed for years by the United States in the Middle East, including state terrorism resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, installation and/or support of ruthless dictators (i.e. Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran), and enabling the Israelis to commit genocide against the Palestinians, these pseudo-Christians have managed to convince many Americans that the US is "good" and the "terrorists" (i.e. the Resistance to US occupation in Iraq) are "evil". As the US government continues to rape the Middle East, Christo-Fascists slap "God Bless America" bumper stickers on their gas-guzzling SUV's actually believing that the Father, the Son, and/or the Holy Spirit would bless a nation governed by murderers, thieves and thugs.
Yes, I can visualize a Christian God sitting on his throne in the kingdom of heaven gazing down upon humankind. As he surveys humanity, he "wisely and judiciously" decides to answer Jane Morgan's prayer for a 2005 Hummer to replace her two year old Navigator. After all, he can't have Jane driving a "jalopy" to worship him on Sundays, now can he? Spying eight year old Mahmoud, a Palestinian in Gaza, God decides to let him die of malnutrition because he is not a Christian, and in fact is an "evil" Muslim who could become "terrorist" someday. Jerry Falwell, who does not appear to be struggling with malnutrition, would be most pleased with his Maker.
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 07:31 AM CST [
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The West, Quietly, is Pillaging Iraq
...In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam. Most Iraqis were greatly relieved. But even apart from the ensuing occupation, their ordeal – their captivity – was far from over. Saddam's creditors, Saddam's former allies, have forced Iraqis to pay billions annually in debt service. If the United States and other world powers have their way, the Iraqis will keep being bled dry – and having their oil hijacked – paying off Saddam's loans for decades to come.
In an interesting wrinkle, the United States is simultaneously seeking to have some loans "forgiven." The United States isn't being altruistic; the price would be more IMF “reforms” and “privatization.” "In exchange [for some debt forgiveness], Iraq will surrender its economic sovereignty to global financial institutions, provide foreign investors greater access to Iraqi natural resources, and increase investment opportunities for multinational corporations." [Brian Dominick, “New Standard”]
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 07:25 AM CST [
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Castro reveals role in Angola, Namibia independence
For the first time, Cuban President Fidel Castro has revealed details of the large Cuban military participation in the war against South African troops in southern Angola in 1987-88. Some 55,000 Cuban troops aided the Angolan counter-offensive, that drove South Africans back to the Namibian border and to the negotiation table. The result was the independence of Namibia, President Castro recalls.
afrol.com
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 07:18 AM CST [
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Row over French law glorifying colonial history causes minister to cancel Caribbean trip
The row over the French government’s decision to retain a law teaching the “positive aspects” of colonial history, has been sparked off again after the country’s Interior Minister postponed his trip to the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe.
Nicolas Sarkozy, who has become a controversial figure in the light of the riots that rocked France’s suburbs in October, announced he cancelled his visit to the country’s former colonies, following protests against his visit, scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
The trip, which was due to address the issues of illegal immigration and drug trafficking between the two regions, will now be held back by a few weeks, the minister said in an interview on Wednesday.
Hundreds of residents on Martinique, which was colonialised by France in the 17th century, participated in rallies in the capital, Fort de France this week, which were organised by elected officials, left-wing politicians, trade unionists and artists protesting against his 3-day stay.
Despite the cancellation of Sarkozy’s visit, demonstrators decided to go ahead with the rallies to put pressure on the government.
Those protesting against the law, have said it justifies “the extermination of peoples, the extinction of indigenous cultures and the plundering of many countries", of which many of these acts took place during slavery in the Caribbean.
Others have labelled it “the law of shame”.
blackbritain.co.uk
rootsie on 12.10.05 @ 07:15 AM CST [
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Friday, December 9th
Britain 'trying to stall $1.3bn theft inquiry that could hurt Allawi's election chances'
The British government is trying to stall an investigation into the theft of more than $1.3bn (£740m) from the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, senior Iraqi officials say.
The government wants to postpone the investigation to help its favoured candidate Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, in the election on 15 December. The money disappeared during his administration.
The UK's enthusiasm for Mr Allawi may have led it into promoting a cover-up of how the money was siphoned off and sent abroad. One Iraqi minister believes the investigation will be dropped when the next government is formed.
The scandal is expected to explode with renewed force in the next few weeks. The Independent has learnt of secret tape recordings of a wide-ranging conversation between a Ministry of Defence official and a businessman, naming politicians and officials involved.
"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, said. "Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal." Most of the military purchases were made in Poland and Pakistan. They included obsolete helicopters, armoured vehicles unable to stop a bullet and grossly over-priced machine guns and bullets. Payments were made in advance. Often the Ministry of Defence did not even have a copy of contracts under which it was paying hundreds of millions of dollars.
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 07:33 AM CST [
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Hot air: Summit heads to a close with no sign of progress
The UN climate conference began 11 days ago. Representatives from 189 countries jetted in to Montreal. Tomorrow the talking stops, with little sign of action. Since the summit began, the seas have risen by 0.077mm, 1,176 million barrels of oil have been pumped, 280,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed, and 907 million tonnes of greenhouse gases have been discharged. So what have 11 days of talks achieved so far?
independent.co.uk
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 07:29 AM CST [
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A Stunning Win for Mumia Abu-Jamal
In a startling new development, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has agreed to hear arguments on three claims by Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal that his 1982 trial and state appeal were tainted by constitutional violations.
Any one of those three claims, if upheld by the three-judge panel, could lead to a new trial for one of America's most famous and long-standing death row prisoners, a Philadelphia-based journalist and former Black Panther activist who was convicted of the 1981 shooting murder of a white Philadelphia police officer.
counterpunch.otg
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 07:26 AM CST [
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Space Weapons and the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War
The United States and Russia maintain thousands of nuclear warheads on long-range ballistic missiles on 15-minute alert. Once launched, they cannot be recalled, and they will strike their targets in roughly 30 minutes. Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, the chance of an accidental nuclear exchange has far from decreased. Yet, the United States may be contemplating further exacerbating this threat by deploying missile interceptors in space.
Both the United States and Russia rely on space-based systems to provide early warning of a nuclear attack. If deployed, however, U.S. space-based missile defense interceptors could eliminate the Russian early warning satellites quickly and without warning. So, just the existence of U.S. space weapons could make Russia's strategic trigger fingers itchy.
The potential protection space-based defenses might offer the United States is swamped therefore by their potential cost: a failure of or false signal from a component of the Russian early warning system could lead to a disastrous reaction and accidental nuclear war. There is no conceivable missile defense, space-based or not, that would offer protection in the event that the Russian nuclear arsenal was launched at the United States.
Nor are the Russians or other countries likely to stand still and watch the United States construct space-based defenses. These states are likely to respond by developing advanced anti-satellite weapon systems.[1] These weapons, in turn, would endanger U.S. early warning systems, impair valuable U.S. weapons intelligence efforts, and increase the jitteriness of U.S. officials.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 07:23 AM CST [
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Watching Human Rights Watch -
Open Letter to Kenneth Roth, Executive Director Human Rights Watch
By Gabriele Zamparini:
...On December 2, 2005 the New York Times published an article with the title “Rights Group Lists 26 It Says U.S. Is Holding in Secret Abroad”. The article quotes Marc Garlasco, Senior Military Analyst at Human Rights Watch, saying:
"One thing I want to make clear is we are talking about some really bad guys," Mr. Garlasco said. "These are criminals who need to be brought to justice. One of our main problems with the U.S. is that justice is not being served by having these people held incognito.”
Mr. Garlasco said, "Our concern is that if illegal methods such as torture are being used against them," trials may "either be impossible or questionable under international standards of jurisprudence." (1)
On December 4, 2005 I wrote to Mr. Garlasco, asking:
1) did the New York Times quote you correctly?
2) if not, will you ask for a formal correction to the NYT?
3) if yes, don’t you think your words are quite bizarre for a HRW’s representative? Did we get to the point that even Human Rights Watch doesn’t care for the presumption of innocence? Is that really HRW’s concern about torture?
In my e-mail I also wrote:
I had the opportunity to interview HRW’s Reed Brody and Hanny Megally just a few years ago. Also because of those interviews I have great esteem and respect for the work of your organization. I fear that your words – as reported by the New York Times’ article – will damage HRW’s image and the trust many people have for its work. (2)
Since I haven’t received any answer, I have now decided to write you an open letter to reiterate my questions and also to ask you if someone who “recommended thousands of aimpoints on hundreds of targets during operations in Iraq and Serbia [and who] also participated in over 50 interrogations as a subject matter expert” fits a senior position at Human Rights Watch.
Mr. Garlasco’s biography reads:
Before coming to HRW, Marc spent seven years in the Pentagon as a senior intelligence analyst covering Iraq. His last position there was chief of high-value targeting during the Iraq War in 2003. Marc was on the Operation Desert Fox (Iraq) Battle Damage Assessment team in 1998, led a Pentagon Battle Damage Assessment team to Kosovo in 1999, and recommended thousands of aimpoints on hundreds of targets during operations in Iraq and Serbia. He also participated in over 50 interrogations as a subject matter expert. (3)
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Garlasco had also an interesting role in damaging a study “published in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, concluding that about 100,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq since it was invaded by a United States-led coalition in March 2003.” (4) The Chronicle of Higher Education writes:
The Washington Post, perhaps most damagingly to the study's reputation, quoted Marc E. Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, as saying, "These numbers seem to be inflated."
thecatsdream.com Human Rights Watch is a George Soros joint. Watch who they watch and who they don't...they make not a peep about Haiti, for example.
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 06:24 AM CST [
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Tire Giant Firestone Hit with Lawsuit over Slave-Like Conditions at Rubber Plantation
UNITED NATIONS - Firestone, a multinational rubber manufacturing giant known for its automobile tires, has come under fire from human rights and environmental groups for its alleged use of child labor and slave-like working conditions at a plantation in Liberia.
Recently, the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, filed a lawsuit charging that thousands of workers, including minors, toil in virtual slavery at Bridgestone's Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia.
Most plantation workers remain 'at the mercy of Firestone for everything from food to health care to education. They risk expulsion and starvation if they raise even minor complaints, and the company makes willful use of this situation to exploit these workers as they have since 1926.'
International Labor Rights Fund lawsuit
According to the complaint filed in the United States District Court in Venice, California, Firestone, which has operated in the West African country since the 1920s, largely depends on poor and often illiterate workers to tap tons of raw latex from rubber trees using primitive tools exposing them to hazardous pesticides and fertilizers.
At Firestone, "all of the workers are poverty-stricken Africans, enduring extremely inhuman conditions under the constant guard of American and now Japanese overseers who live in the finest houses in Liberia, looking down on the field hands from their verandahs and the company's private golf course," the group says.
By contrast, "most of the workers have never been off of the plantation and do not even know that the world has moved on and slavery has been abolished."
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 06:16 AM CST [
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Strangers in the Dazzling Night: A Mix of Oil and Misery
Across Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta, hellish towers of fire throw an auburn glow, scorching the communities that live under them and sending dark columns of smoke into the sky. They are fueled by natural gas, which is found along with the Bonny Light crude that makes Nigeria the second largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa.
The gas is a highly valuable product used to fuel industry across the power-hungry globe, and Nigeria has more than 600 trillion cubic feet of it, one of the largest reserves in the world. If harnessed and put to use, experts say, Nigerian gas could light the whole continent for the better part of a millennium.
But for decades there has been no way to capture it because oil companies and the Nigerian government, a majority partner in all oil operations here, had not built the infrastructure to make use of it. The market for natural gas inside Nigeria is tiny, and exporting it requires pipelines and other infrastructure that cost billions of dollars to build.
And so for decades it has simply been burned off, or flared. In Ebocha, which is home to an oil plant run by the Italian oil company Agip, the flares have been ablaze since the early 1970's, residents said. Over the years flares have become a blazing symbol of how the Nigerian government and its partners in the oil business have sucked endless wealth from this region, leaving its residents to suffer the environmental consequences of oil extraction while reaping little economic benefit.
nytimes.comThe Times cries crocodile tears over the Niger Delta and demonizes Chavez in Venezuela for addressing similar injustice.
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 06:12 AM CST [
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We Must End the Genocide
12/08/05 "ICH" -- -- On December 10th the world celebrates the 57th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet our government is ignoring the most terrible violations of these rights in the killing and enslavement of the people of Darfur, Sudan.
Last year the United States branded the Janjaweed killings in Darfur as genocide.
This year the Congress eliminated all of the $59 million in support for the African Union peacekeepers from the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, giving the appearance of complicity in genocide.
The United States encouraged the peace settlement between Khartoum and the southern Juba government of divided Sudan that ended the civil war. Why then are we not actively supporting the peace effort in Darfur?
The U.S. Government appears to be changing its policy toward Sudan. The U.S.-controlled World Bank is supplying $20 million in emergency aid to the Juba government in southern Sudan, while the State Department has allowed the genocidal Khartoum government to hire a lobbyist in Washington!
Since 1999 China has invested $3 billion to build the oil pipeline that connects the oil fields of southern Sudan with the Red Sea port in the north. Sudan is estimated to have 563 million barrels of reserves. Is this the reason we are courting the Khartoum government at the expense of millions of refugees from the Darfur region?
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 06:08 AM CST [
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Rummy exit expected; Lieberman eyed for job
WASHINGTON - White House officials are telling associates they expect Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quit early next year, once a new government is formed in Iraq, sources said yesterday.
Rumsfeld's deputy, Gordon England, is the inside contender to replace him, but there's also speculation that Sen. Joe Lieberman - a Democrat who ran against Bush-Cheney in the 2000 election - might become top guy at the Pentagon.
That's not as farfetched as it might first appear.
The Daily News has learned that the White House considered Lieberman for the UN ambassador's job last year before giving the post to John Bolton, a Bush adviser said.
nydailynews.com
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 06:05 AM CST [
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Acquitted terror accused may be deported
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- U.S. federal agents may retry or seek to deport to the Middle East a former Florida professor who was acquitted on terrorism charges.
A Tampa, Fla., jury on Tuesday acquitted Sami al-Arian on some of the criminal counts and remained deadlocked on others. If he is retried, it could be on all or some of these counts, reports The New York Times.
If he is not retried, law enforcement officials, still stunned by the acquittal, told the newspaper they may bring separate immigration charges leading to his deportation.
The trail lasted five months but the jury could not reach any guilty verdicts against Arian or three co-defendants on accusations that they ran a North American front for Palestinian terrorists. Arian's vocal support for militant Palestinian causes had put him under U.S. surveillance since the early 1990's. Muslims in Florida and around the country celebrated the verdicts.
upi.comSeems like those Muslims care more about the rule of law than the average American.
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 05:58 AM CST [
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Condi's Trail of Lies
12/08/05 "Salon.com" -- -- Condoleezza Rice's contradictory, misleading and outright false statements about the US and torture have taken America's moral standing - and her own - to new depths. The metamorphosis of Condoleezza Rice from the chrysalis of the protégé into the butterfly of the State Department has not been a natural evolution but has demanded self-discipline. She has burnished an image of the ultimate loyalist, yet betrayed her mentor, George H.W. Bush's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. She is the team player, yet carefully inserted knives in the back of her predecessor, Colin Powell, climbing up them like a ladder of success. She is the person most trusted on foreign policy by the president, yet was an enabler for Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives. Now her public relations team at the State Department depicts her as a restorer of realism, builder of alliances and maker of peace.
informationclearinghouse.infoAmerica's 'moral standing' huh? This is as ridiculous as applauding the UK's 'principled stance' against torture. Morals and principles have eluded the West for centuries now.No torture, please, we're British!
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 05:54 AM CST [
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How Many Lives Should Be Spent To Keep America From Economic and Social Collapse?
12/08/05 "ICH" -- -- "(I)t will take much more than the death of a few thousand soldiers and the addition of a few hundred billion to the U.S. government debt (200B adds 2.5% to America's debt load) to make them walk away from access to the hundreds of trillions of dollars, at current prices, worth of hydrocarbons that the region will extract over the next 50 years. (likely thousands of trillions at future prices)
Their financial if not moral calculus becomes even more understandable when you consider that even this amount is literally tiny when you compare it to the economic multiplier effect that having oil and gas allows to the industrialized world. The money multiplier is nothing to it. Consider. By some calculations every barrel of oil carries the equivalent of 23,200 man-hours of work in the physics sense of the term. Oil and natural gas are like air, water or soil, in that they are easy to take for granted until you lack them. (1) . . . Jeff Berg, Canadian political and peak oil analyst.
Using this thought provoking analysis for George’s motivations, it is easy to see why George relegated Afghanistan to second place in “The War on Terror”. Raising poppies for illegal heroin production, as profitable as it may be, is no match for the long-term profitability of Middle Eastern Oil. So, while we are counting bodies in the thousands, George, Dick and Donald may be preparing for body bags in the tens of thousands and may be in the process of reducing the Iraqi ownership of this oil using genocide. With fortunes this size at stake, it is no wonder the Iraqis needed a “good dose of democracy”. It is no wonder Iran and Syria are suddenly found to be in the sights of our “democratic” leader. It is no wonder George doesn’t appear to feel much remorse over the loss of a relatively small number of American soldiers nor pangs of guilt in asking Congress for relatively modest sums to maintain his war machine – and pay off campaign debts.
The reader may well ask, “Where will the military come up with the manpower necessary to maintain and/or supplement our present military force since recruitment is down to perilous levels for even the Pentagon’s present comparatively modest troop requirements - to say nothing of expanding or prolonging our manpower requirements? Of course the obvious answer is another military draft. However, that avenue is not without its perils to the Administration if one considers the rebellion of the American people toward the draft during Viet Nam and their actually having stopped the Viet Nam War partly because of the draft. Today, there is a vast difference in the American environment. Today, thanks to George’s war effort and its hysteria, America has set in place an atmosphere of “security” or suppression of freedom that was unknown during Viet Nam. George has now set in motion a precedent for suppressing dissent unparalleled in our American history.
Another expanding source of manpower might be the use of mercenaries – even considering their cost. If money is no object and monies spent on war are to be considered a long-term investment, then American and third world mercenaries present a virtually limitless supply of fighting personnel.
It has been calculated that our present American economic life style involves importing 6.36 million barrels of oil per day at a cost to our GNP of $426 million dollars per day – calculated on $67 per barrel oil. If oil goes to $100 per barrel, soldiers’ lives become even cheaper. We see how cheap life becomes if we consider:
”Its (Iraq’s) oil reserves were equal to those of Saudi Arabia; its reconstruction was estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars to American firms; while its strategic position made it an ideal place from which to project U.S. military power to the oil-rich Gulf and to a vast region beyond”.( 2)
This is the view that drove the Bush Administration to “retaliate” against Iraq for its non-existent participation in the 9/11 attacks on the US. However, it is unlikely that this is the view that allowed the Pentagon to send our troops into Iraq without body armor or proper vehicle armor. This unpreparedness of our troops for battle points to a much deeper weakness (or sickness) within our country’s defense establishment. One wonders if even corruption is sufficiently comprehensive to describe what should surely be considered a national disgrace, a national tragedy and a war crime. One wonders if even “politics” is a sufficiently offensive word to describe these “oversights”. If “stupidity” is the proper descriptive for what we have seen, we Americans are in even worse trouble than we thought.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 05:48 AM CST [
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Iraq Closes Border With Syria, Declares Emergency Law
7 December 2005 -- The Iraqi government imposed emergency legislation in two predominantly Sunni Muslim provinces for the 30 days and closed the borders with Syria until further notice.
rferl.org
rootsie on 12.09.05 @ 05:44 AM CST [
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Thursday, December 8th
Pinter Nobel Lecture: "Blatant state terrorism"
Art, Truth, and Politics...The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.
What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.
Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.
Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:53 AM CST [
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Struggle Against Ourselves
I want to take a moment to remind you of where we have come from.
For the first three million years of human history, we lived according to circumstance. Our lives were ruled by the happenstances of ecology. We existed, as all animals do, in fear of hunger, predation, weather and disease.
For the following few thousand years, after we had grasped the rudiments of agriculture and crop storage, we enjoyed greater food security, and soon destroyed most of our non-human predators. But our lives were ruled by the sword, the axe and the spear. The primary struggle was for land. We needed it not just to grow our crops but also to provide our sources of energy - grazing for our horses and bullocks, wood for our fires.
Then we discovered fossil fuels, and everything changed. No longer were we constrained by the need to live on ambient energy; we could support ourselves by means of the sunlight stored over the preceding 350 million years. The new sources of energy permitted the economy to grow - to grow sufficiently to absorb some of the people expelled by the previous era's land disputes. Fossil fuels allowed both industry and cities to expand, which permitted the workers to organise and to force the despots to loosen their grip on power.
Fossil fuels helped us fight wars of a horror never contemplated before, but they also reduced the need for war. For the first time in human history, indeed for the first time in biological history, there was a surplus of available energy. We could keep body and soul together without having to fight someone else for the energy we needed. Agricultural productivity rose 10 or 20 fold. Economic productivity rose 100 fold. Most of us could live as no one had ever lived before.
And everything you see around you results from that.
zmag.org
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:46 AM CST [
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Pompeii on the Mississippi
NEW ORLEANS -- Three months after the epic flood, we are specimens of congressional torture. Network celebrities who swept through for disaster backdrops are gone. The suffering in the Superdome and Convention Center is old footage. Torturing a city is tougher coverage for soft newsbodies.
Galatoire's restaurant will open in January. Come for Mardi Gras. Catch a night parade. Tour our dead neighborhoods. See Fats Domino's dead home. Picnic on the levee of our Pompeii.
boston.comReport from the Devastated Front Lines of the Lower Ninth Ward - New Orleans...We spoke to many people. Most seemed to be in shock. All were polite and grateful. This neighborhood has flooded many times because of breeches in the levee in the Industrial canal nearby.
The people were told a barge broke the canal. Several people related the same story that early in the morning, they heard an explosion. Then the water poured in--before the rains came.
Many believe the levee was dynamited to drain the canal into the Lower Ninth Ward rather than the wealthier neighborhoods. This is not paranoia. The levees have been dynamited before for just that reason. In the 1920s the levees were intentionally dynamited to save other areas of New Orleans and many people still suspect the same thing happened in the 1960s when there were many unexplained levee breaks.
Ridge to FEMA critics: 'Stop whining'WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says critics of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Hurricane Katrina response should "quit whining."
Ridge's outspoken comments are the first time he has responded in public to criticisms of the way FEMA was incorporated into his new department in 2003.
"They ought to quit whining about what happened in the past -- that had absolutely nothing to do with what happened in Katrina," he told United Press International.
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:41 AM CST [
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Threatened by warming, Arctic people file suit against US
The people of the Arctic filed a landmark human rights complaint against the United States, blaming the world's No. 1 carbon polluter for stoking the global warming that is destroying their habitat. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), representing native people in the vast, sparsely-populated region girdling the Earth's far north, said they had petitioned an inter-American panel to seek relief for Canadian and US Inuit.
"For Inuit, warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy their hunting and food-sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, and possibly become extinct," said Robert Corell, who spearheaded an Arctic climate impact assessment.
breitbart.com
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:29 AM CST [
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Normalizing Evil on the Local News
...It's bad enough that Bush's monumentally illegal, immoral, and brazenly imperialist occupation of Iraq is actually quite bad for Andrew's country, not to mention the Iraqis and the cause of global peace. This miserable, mass-murderous conflict drains tens of billions of dollars from desperately needed domestic programs. It is helping fuel the nation's skyrocketing fiscal and trade deficits. It is encouraging extremist Islamic terrorism, worsening America's terrible image abroad, and further de-stabilizing a region of critical strategic
significance in the world economic and state system.
But the really despicable thing is the way local television news makes the maddening loss of American life in the criminal war on Iraq into a routine, acceptable, and practically banal fact of daily experience.
zmag.org
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:24 AM CST [
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U.S. gives Israel a large new camp
CAMP NACHSHONIM, Israel, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- The United States Tuesday delivered a sprawling storage base it has built for the Israeli army.
The base, Nachshonim, will store equipment for an Israeli armored division.
Nachshonim, which covers almost 400 acres, is the third base the United States has built for Israel under an agreement reached during the 1998 Wye River talks with the Palestinian Authority.
Israel then undertook to turn West Bank areas to the Palestinian Authority and the Clinton administration undertook to provide $1.2 billion to implement the agreement. That included several camps to replace facilities Israel would be vacating in the West Bank.
The United States has since delivered a training base for Israel's paratroop brigade opposite the southern West Bank, another for the Golani infantry brigade opposite the northwestern West Bank, and Tuesday it delivered the storage facility for the Idan reserve division east of Tel Aviv.
upi.com
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:19 AM CST [link]
Cuba: U.S. Christians March on Guantanamo to visit Prisoners on Hunger Strike
Santiago, Cuba --" Twenty-five Christians in the nonviolent tradition of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker arrived in Cuba last evening and plan to set out from Santiago today on a solemn fifty-mile march to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They seek to defend human dignity by visiting with the hundreds of detainees who have been held for more than three years under horrific conditions by the U.S. government.
As a Christian, I feel compelled to reach out across national boundaries to perform one of the most basic acts of faith as described in the gospel of Matthew 25, I was in prison and you visited me, explained Catholic Worker Matthew Daloisio. We want our fellow Americans to see the shameful acts of torture and abuse taking place in this and other illegal prisons hidden across the globe. We pray that others will join us in urging our government to allow us to perform this act of Christian faith."
infoshop.org
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:13 AM CST [
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Torture Is an American Value: Reality vs. the Rhetoric
12/07/05 "VVAW" -- -- I became aware of torture as a U.S. policy in 1969 when I was serving as a USAF combat security officer working near Can Tho City in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. I was informed about the CIA's Phong Dinh Province Interrogation Center (PIC) at the Can Tho Army airfield where supposedly "significant members" of the VCI (Viet Cong infrastructure) were taken for torture as part of the Phoenix Pacification Program. A huge French-built prison nearby was also apparently utilized for torture of suspects from the Delta region. Many were routinely murdered.
Naive, I was shocked! The Agency for International Development (AID) working with Southern Illinois University, for example, trained Vietnamese police and prison officials in the art of torture ("interrogations") under cover of "public safety." American officials believed they were teaching "better methods," often making suggestions during torture sessions conducted by Vietnamese police.
Instead of the recent euphemism "illegal combatants," the United State in Vietnam claimed prisoners were "criminal" and therefore exempt from Geneva Convention protections.
The use of torture as a function of terror, or its equivalent in sadistic behavior, has been historic de facto U.S. policy.
Our European ancestors' shameful, sadistic treatment of the indigenous inhabitants based on an ethos of arrogance and violence has become ingrained in our values. "Manifest destiny" has rationalized as a religion the elimination or assimilation of those perceived to be blocking American progress—at home or abroad—a belief that expansion of the nation, including subjugation of natives and others, is divinely ordained, that our "superior race" is obligated to "civilize" those who stand in the way.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:08 AM CST [
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CIA 'emptied secret jails' before Rice Europe trip
The CIA last month emptied two secret prisons in Eastern Europe of terrorist suspects in a frantic effort to defuse the "rendition" controversy ahead of Condoleezza Rice's visit to Europe, sources in the agency have claimed.
Eleven leading al-Qa'eda suspects were transferred to a new CIA facility in North Africa, current and former officers told ABC television.
news.telegraph.co.ukRice speaks out against torture of detaineesThe US appeared to bow to international pressure yesterday by declaring it would respect international laws against cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners.
After being bombarded with questions about alleged secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe while in Ukraine, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, said: "As a matter of ... policy, the United States' obligations under the [UN convention against torture] which prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment extends to US personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the US or outside the US."
Ms Rice's use of words represented at least a rhetorical shift. Until yesterday, the White House was resisting draft Senate legislation promoted by John McCain, suggesting international legal restraints on all American interrogators.
rootsie on 12.08.05 @ 07:04 AM CST [
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Wednesday, December 7th
It's called Apophis. It's 390m wide. And it could hit Earth in 31 years time
In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness.
A fitting name, astronomers reasoned, for a menace now hurtling towards Earth from outerspace. Scientists are monitoring the progress of a 390-metre wide asteroid discovered last year that is potentially on a collision course with the planet, and are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with it.
Nasa has estimated that an impact from Apophis, which has an outside chance of hitting the Earth in 2036, would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere.
guardian.co.ukApophis is not a 'demon' or the 'spirit of evil'. Apophis is the great serpent through which souls who are seeking union with the divine must pass. So really, the vehicle of purification. Not being Christian/apocalyptic here, it's just interesting and ironic.
rootsie on 12.07.05 @ 07:27 AM CST [
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Hurricane victims tell US Congress of racial slurs
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Survivors from New Orleans told a congressional panel on Tuesday they felt abandoned by government at all levels after Hurricane Katrina hit the city and had been subjected to racial slurs and menaced by guns when they sought food and water.
"We were abandoned. City officials did nothing to protect us," Patricia Thompson, a New Orleans evacuee now living in Texas, told a House of Representatives panel investigating the response to the storm.
"We saw buses, helicopters and FEMA trucks but no one stopped to help us. We never felt so cut off in all our lives," Thompson said.
She described "demoralizing and inhumane" treatment by police telling the panel: "We were cursed when we asked for help for our elderly. We had guns aimed at us by the police who were suppose to be there to protect us."
Thompson said her 5-year-old granddaughter cried in terror when a policeman pointed a gun at her and she worried about whether she had put up her hands correctly.
"I know the police were scared, but they had no right to treat everyone like criminals," she said.
The witnesses blamed local, state and federal officials for inadequately responding to victims in New Orleans and told the committee they thought racism was the root cause of their harsh treatment after the storm caused massive flooding in the city more than three months ago.
Of the five African Americans who testified, only Terrol Williams, a former federal worker, said he did not think the botched response was rooted in racial attitudes. He said authorities were unprepared and a mandatory evacuation should have been ordered sooner.
Leah Hodges, a community activist, recalled trying to help a group of stranded senior citizens. The military took them to an evacuation point on a highway where they spent the night, awakening to a "bunch of hard red necks scowling and growling at us in military uniforms ... pointing guns at us and treating us worse than prisoners of war," she said.
Hodges described waiting in the burning sun in conditions she likened to a concentration camp. Rep. Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican, asked her to stop making that comparison.
"I'm going to call it what it is. If I put a dress on a pig, a pig is still a pig," she responded heatedly.
reuters.comKatrina's Emotional Damage Lingers
Mental Health Experts Say Impact Is Far Beyond What They've Ever FacedBlack people three times as likely to be in mental hospital (UK)
rootsie on 12.07.05 @ 07:18 AM CST [
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Democrats Fear Backlash at Polls for Antiwar Remarks
Strong antiwar comments in recent days by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have opened anew a party rift over Iraq, with some lawmakers warning that the leaders' rhetorical blasts could harm efforts to win control of Congress next year.
Several Democrats joined President Bush yesterday in rebuking Dean's declaration to a San Antonio radio station Monday that "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong."
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 12.07.05 @ 07:11 AM CST [
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Tuesday, December 6th
African earthquake buries children in homes
Children were buried in their homes after a powerful earthquake hit central Africa yesterday, with reports suggesting there had been a number of deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The number of deaths and the extent of the damage was still unclear last night, but local people reported that the earthquake had toppled flimsy houses in the town of Kalemie, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in eastern Congo.
"Residents told us that some people had died and others were injured but we do not have any figures yet," said Michel Bonnardeaux, a UN spokesman in the capital Kinshasa, 1,000 miles from the epicentre of the earthquake.
The UN spokesman said most of the casualties were struck by falling zinc and steel roofs. "Dozens of houses have collapsed, several children were buried by the roofs of their houses," local aid worker Dr Jean-Donne Owali told AP.
He said children had been rushed to his clinic bleeding from head wounds suffered when their mud-and-thatch homes collapsed.
A community leader in Kalemie said he had also heard of casualties. "I have heard of at least one death and many injuries, but we need to check more [in poor neighbourhoods] where houses have been damaged," Fidel Muteba told Reuters.
Francois Xavier, a local journalist, said he had seen buildings shaking. "Yes, it was very strong, everything shook for about 10 seconds," he said.
There are a number of refugee camps in the region, sheltering people displaced by Congo's long-running civil war.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:55 AM CST [
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CIA Ruse Is Said to Have Damaged Probe in Milan
MILAN -- In March 2003, the Italian national anti-terrorism police received an urgent message from the CIA about a radical Islamic cleric who had mysteriously vanished from Milan a few weeks before. The CIA reported that it had reliable information that the cleric, the target of an Italian criminal investigation, had fled to an unknown location in the Balkans.
In fact, according to Italian court documents and interviews with investigators, the CIA's tip was a deliberate lie, part of a ruse designed to stymie efforts by the Italian anti-terrorism police to track down the cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Egyptian refugee known as Abu Omar.
The strategy worked for more than a year until Italian investigators learned that Nasr had not gone to the Balkans after all. Instead, prosecutors here have charged, he was abducted off a street in Milan by a team of CIA operatives who took him to two U.S. military bases in succession and then flew him to Egypt, where he was interrogated and allegedly tortured by Egyptian security agents before being released to house arrest.
washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:52 AM CST [
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Saddam's Outbursts Well-Received by Some
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Watching the Saddam Hussein trial at home on television, Jinan Mushrif said she got chills of pride Monday when she saw the ousted leader and a co-defendant chant, "Long live Iraq, long live the Arab state." "These are the real men of Iraq, not those who hide behind their bodyguards," the 49-year-old Baghdad housewife said with a laugh.
Saddam's repeated outbursts at the third session of his trial on charges of mass murder found a receptive audience among some Sunni Arabs, tapping into Sunni resentment of the new order in Iraq, in which their once-ruling minority community is now dominated by the Shiite Muslim majority and the Kurds.
Mushrif's son, Ziyad Tariq, stayed home from work at his auto parts shop to watch the trial. He believes the trial is a sham intended to boost support among followers of the Shiite leadership.
The trial is just "a battle of talk, in which no one cares about Iraqis. They just want to fulfill their own objectives," he said.
His suspicions only increased when the first prosecution witness described a wave of arrests and torture in the Shiite town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam.
"Did you see this guy, with his Iranian accent?" the 27-year-old Tariq shouted to his mother. "He is wearing a suit without a tie, just like the Persians."
breitbart.com
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:49 AM CST [
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Democracy under threat: Chávez will only gain from the US-backed opposition's ploy to undermine elections
The people of Venezuela have gone to the polls 11 times in seven years. Almost a superfluity of democracy, some might think, and signs of electoral fatigue could be detected in Sunday's elections for the National Assembly when only 30% of the electorate bothered to vote. The rest perceived the result as a foregone conclusion since in earlier elections President Hugo Chávez, or the candidates he backed, had stacked up substantial majorities. Sunday's poll followed the trend, and the Chávez list wiped the board.
This time, however, the once vocal opposition was strangely absent. Four of the small opposition parties decided to withdraw at the last minute, in a cynical manoeuvre designed to upset the hard-won stability achieved since the recall referendum in August 2004 (engineered by the opposition to try to secure the president's resignation). Handsomely won by Chávez with a margin of 59 to 41, the referendum was certified as free and fair by observers from the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the Carter Centre, but some of the opposition parties refused to accept the result. Their rejection did little to enhance their authority or popularity and when they withdrew from Sunday's poll they knew that they faced defeat and humiliation.
Their action irritated the mission sent by the OAS which believed it had negotiated a settlement over opposition complaints about the new automated voting system. The opposition then turned turtle and announced its withdrawal. It was not acting alone. In the background, at private meetings on the island of Aruba in the Dutch Antilles and in public declarations by Thomas Shannon, the US secretary of state for Latin American affairs, the opposition had been elaborating a strategy to overthrow Chávez. Its plan was to make people believe that "democracy in Venezuela is in grave peril", as Shannon put it to a Washington subcommittee two weeks ago.
It is indeed in peril, threatened by a tiny ragbag of opposition groups given disproportionate international influence through the support of the US. By their irresponsible electoral abstention, they hoped to undermine the credibility of the parliamentary system.
The US-backed strategy is to use apparently neutral non-governmental organisations to tell the world that the elections are not free and fair, that press freedom is under threat, and that human rights are not respected. These allegations are then exaggerated and amplified in Washington.
The complaints are nonsense. The opposition still owns most of the newspapers and television stations. The judiciary has been comprehensively reformed after the scandals of the previous decade when half the judges were found to be corrupt or incompetent. Elections have been endlessly vetted and human rights have been extended to the great mass of the people.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:45 AM CST [
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Latino Troops Have Parents
...For "illegal" Mexicans or those who want a quick route to citizenship, the military holds a strong attraction. Since Mexico provides the closest and most logical recruiting arena, Mexican "illegals" numerically outstrip all other Latin Americans living in the United States and in Iraq itself. Some 8000 Mexicans have now volunteered for official military service (John Ross, Counterpunch February 21, 2005).
Mexicans and those of Mexican descent make up more than half of the approximately 110,000 Latinos mostly, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Central Americans currently serving in the U.S. military. In addition, almost 25,000 other Mexicans have enlisted as a means of obtaining US citizenship. Coyotes smuggled some of these Mexicans into the country as children who never had any "legal" documents.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:39 AM CST [
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Cockburn: The Revolt of the Generals
The immense significance of Rep John Murtha's November 17 speech calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq is that it signals mutiny in the US senior officer corps, seeing the institution they lead as "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth", to use the biting words of their spokesman, John Murtha, as he reiterated on December his denunciation of Bush's destruction of the Army.
A CounterPuncher with nearly 40 years experience working in and around the Pentagon told me this week that "The Four Star Generals picked Murtha to make this speech because he has maximum credibility." It's true. Even in the US Senate there's no one with quite Murtha's standing to deliver the message, except maybe for Byrd, but the venerable senator from West Virginia was a vehement opponent of the war from the outset , whereas Murtha voted for it and only recently has turned around.
So the Four-Star Generals briefed Murtha and gave him the state-of-the-art data which made his speech so deadly, stinging the White House into panic-stricken and foolish denunciations of Murtha as a clone of Michael Moore.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:36 AM CST [
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U.S. Media Dodging Air War in Iraq
The U.S. government is waging an air war in Iraq. "In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased," Seymour Hersh reported in the Dec. 5 edition of The New Yorker. "Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border."
Hersh added: "As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war."
Here's a big reason why: Major U.S. news outlets are dodging the extent of the Pentagon's bombardment from the air, an avoidance all the more egregious because any drawdown of U.S. troop levels in Iraq is very likely to be accompanied by a step-up of the air war.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:33 AM CST [
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The Lies of John Edwards
The apology of John Edwards, former Senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate, for voting for the Iraq war in 2002, has been widely praised. But his apology is based on a lie, one that other Democrats are likely to embrace and one which will serve their ambitions but hide the truth. We should have no illusions about this, for to believe otherwise is to set ourselves up for the continuation of Bush's war by a Democrat.
Edwards declared in an op-ed column in the Washington Post on November 13, 2005: "The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war." Sounds simple enough. "Had I known then what I know now, etc." Poor John Edwards was deceived. But was he? How was it that 21 other Democratic Senators and 2 Republicans were not deceived and voted against the war?
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:30 AM CST [
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Iran threatens counter-strike
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Riza Asaffi, speaking with journalists in Teheran, said that recent Israeli statements on Iran's nuclear project showed that the Israeli government is frustrated from a failure to bring pressure from the international community to on Iran.
He claimed that a "serious crisis" within the "Zionist authorities" was the main factor behind what he described as Israeli threats. His comments were reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency.
"The Zionist authorities are well aware that if they make a foolish mistake against Iran, Iran's harsh response will be destructive and determined," said the spokesman. "Their approach comes from their anger over the fact that they can't realize their plans," he added.
Earlier, Benjamin Netanyahu told the Voice of Israel national radio network that "Israel must take every necessary step to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran must be prevented from developing this threat to the State of Israel. If, by the elections, the current government works to achieve this, I will give it my full support – and if it does not, I intend on establishing the next government, and then we'll act."
ynetnews.comNetanyahu Backs Pre-Emptive Strike on Iran...Netanyahu left few doubts about his solution: a pre-emptive strike similar to the 1981 attack ordered by then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin that destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor.
"I will continue the tradition established by Menachem Begin, who did not allow Iraq to develop such a nuclear threat against Israel, and by a daring and courageous act gave us two decades of tranquility," Netanyahu told the Maariv daily. "I believe that this is what Israel has to do."
Netanyahu, a bitter political enemy of Sharon, said he would support the prime minister if he carried out a pre-emptive strike. "If it is not done by the present government, I intend to lead the next government and to stop this threat. I will take every step required to avoid a situation in which Iran can threaten us with nuclear weapons."
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:27 AM CST [
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Today Iraq, Tomorrow the World
The number in Germany is 69,395. The number in Japan is 35,307. The number in Korea is 32,744. The number in Italy is 12,258. The number in the United Kingdom is 11,093.
I am not speaking of the number of car accidents last year in Germany, Japan, Korea, Italy, or the United Kingdom. And neither am I speaking of the number of poisonings, suicides, or armed robberies in any of these countries.
No, I am speaking of something far more lethal: the continued presence of U.S. troops.
According to the latest edition of the "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country," published by the Defense Department’s Directorate for Information Operations and Reports (DIOR), the U.S. has troops in 142 countries. This is up from the figure of 136 countries that the government was reporting the last time I addressed the subject of the number of countries under the shadow of the U.S. Global Empire. Additions to the list are Armenia, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Iran, Malawi, Moldova, Slovak Republic, and Sudan. Subtractions are Eritrea and North Korea. Only 49 countries to go and the United States will have hegemony over the whole world. But it is worse than it appears. Counting the U.S. troops in territories, the officially reported number of countries or territories that the United States has troops in is now 158. It is not without cause that the twentieth century’s greatest proponent of liberty, and the greatest opponent of the state, Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), said that "empirically, taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialist government has been the United States."
lewrockwell.com
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:20 AM CST [
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Has 'War' become a leading brand for United States?
How Bush's imperial policies are being linked to economic woes and CEO angst in America.
We hear a lot about the government largesse flowing toward Halliburton, Bechtel and a handful of other favored firms chosen to rebuild Iraq. Less often do we consider the possibility that the administration's bellicosity has been a major business blunder.
Breaking with the Clinton administration's advocacy for a cooperative, rules-based international economy -- a multilateral order known to critics as corporate globalization -- the Bush administration has fashioned a new model of imperial globalization, aggressive and unilateralist. This agenda, at best, benefits a narrow slice of the American business community and leaves the rest exposed to a world of popular resentment and economic uncertainty.
If Bush is an oil president, he's not a Disney president, nor a Coca-Cola one. If Vice President Dick Cheney is working diligently to help Halliburton rebound, the war he helped lead hasn't worked out nearly so well for Starbucks.
sfgate.com
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:17 AM CST [
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Where they hide the cash
12/05/05 "The Guardian" -- -- Five trillion dollars has been corruptly removed from the world's poorest countries and lodged permanently in the world's richest countries. That is the "conservative estimate" not of a leftwing anti-globalisation activist but of a leading American businessman and enthusiast for capitalism who has just completed a major study of how multinational corporations, wealthy individuals and unscrupulous governments are using the world's banking systems in ways that spread poverty.
When aid or debt relief are discussed, attention often focuses on corrupt leaders and governments in Africa and other parts of the developing world. But they are amateurs compared with the rich companies and individuals who use the world's tax havens and banking systems to hide sums of money that could address almost all of the continent's financial needs.
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.06.05 @ 07:12 AM CST [
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Monday, December 5th
Home truths for European allies
Condoleezza Rice will spell out some home truths when she arrives in Germany today amid growing uproar over the US "rendition" of terrorist suspects, alleged CIA secret prisons in Europe and claims of tacit connivance by Britain and other European governments.
Far from apologising or admitting error, the US secretary of state is expected to privately tell Europe's leaders not to make a fuss about CIA activities which, she will argue, form a key part of the post-9/11 "war on terror" to which they all signed up. Administration officials briefing at the weekend told the Washington Post that the American line will be that "we're all in this together and you need to look at yourselves as much as us ... people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:56 AM CST [
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Saddam's lawyers walk out of court
Saddam Hussein's defence team today walked out of court denying the legality of the trial.
In farcical scenes, the former US attorney-general Ramsey Clark attempted to challenge the legitimacy of the proceedings while the chief judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, said only Saddam's chief lawyer could address the hearing.
Mr Clark spent 15 minutes trying to address the court in English but the judge refused to hear the application, insisting that the official language of the court was Arabic.
After the walkout, Saddam stood up with his half-brother Barazan Ibrahim and declared that the court had been appointed by US occupiers. The two men chanted: "Long live Iraq. Long live the Arab state."
Prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi had earlier tried to exclude Mr Clark and other foreign lawyers from the hearing in Baghdad's Green Zone by arguing that their documents were not issued according to law.
The defence lawyers were later allowed to address the court after a 90-minute recess.
Mr Clark argued that the levels of protection offered for defence lawyers and their families were "absurd", and warned that the trial would collapse without improved safeguards.
"This trial can divide or heal. Unless it is seen as absolutely fair, and fair in fact, it will divide rather than reconcile Iraq," he said.
Saddam's defence team at one point included more than 1,500 volunteer lawyers alongside a core team of 22. But 1,100 of those walked out last month over the killings of two lawyers representing his co-defendants.
The former Qatari justice minister Najib al-Nueimi also queried whether the court was legitimate, arguing that it had been set up by the US occupation rather than the Iraqi government.
guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:52 AM CST [
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Chavez calls watchdog group a top enemy
CARACAS, Venezuela -- They call themselves defenders of democracy, but President Hugo Chavez brands them conspirators, coup plotters and lackeys of the U.S. government.
Leaders of the Venezuelan vote monitoring group Sumate are at the center of a political crisis as the country's main opposition parties boycott Sunday's congressional elections.
The group complains there are problems with the voting system, and the government has begun running ads on state TV attacking Sumate leader Maria Corina Machado as a dark figure paid to do Washington's dirty work.
She is facing trial next week on conspiracy charges that could bring up to 16 years in prison, but she is unapologetic about meeting with President Bush or accepting money from the National Endowment for Democracy, which receives funds from the U.S. Congress.
"We're searching for the truth, we're trying to defend the rights of the citizens, and we live in a country where people can be persecuted for doing that," Machado told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday.
Chavez said the election boycott was a plot hatched in Washington and accused Sumate of conspiracy, saying: "The empire has activated its pawns; it's moving them."
Sumate, headquartered in wealthy eastern Caracas, is widely seen as an enemy by Chavez's largely poor supporters. Some protesters this week carried a plastic foam tombstone bearing Machado's photo and the painted epitaph "Sumate," which translates as "Join Up."
State TV ads show a photo of Machado meeting Bush at the White House in May, with cartoon dollars flowing out of Bush's sleeve. Another cartoon shows Machado dancing in a Statue of Liberty outfit and singing: "We have money to topple the government."
seattlepi.nwsource.comChavez’s Party Wins 68% of Seats in Venezuela’s Parliament
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:46 AM CST [
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Wearying Wait for Federal Aid in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 2 - They are the faces and voices of a city's desperation. Stepping wearily up to a Federal Emergency Management Agency help center here, all have a similar story of ruin in the past, anxiety over the future and frustration in the present, suffered differently each time.
Young, middle-aged and old, these citizens of New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina and now urgently seeking government assistance, spoke Friday of sleeping in a truck and on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that never seems to come. Trickling into the crowded center in the Uptown neighborhood here - hoping for a trailer, a loan, cash, anything - they were grimly resigned to waiting, and waiting some more.
"You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day," said Myrna Guity, 43, whose import business was wiped out by the storm, along with her home in New Orleans East. "You get no answers to your questions. They're evasive. You're constantly 'pending.' What are you going to be doing, 'pending' for the rest of your life? I've lost everything."
nytimes.comLa. Governor Seeks to 'Set the Record Straight:' Blanco Releases Katrina Records "We need everything you've got," Blanco is quoted in a memo as telling President Bush on Aug. 29, the day Katrina made landfall. But despite assurances from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that 500 buses were "standing by," Blanco's aides were compelled to take action when the FEMA buses failed to materialize, documents show. "We need buses," Andy Kopplin, chief of staff to Blanco, said in an e-mail to Blanco staffers late on Aug. 30, the day after the storm hit. "Find buses that can go to NO [New Orleans] ASAP."
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:42 AM CST [
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KBR workers in Iraq paid 50 cents an hour
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- While the United States spends billions on troop support in Iraq, the people serving the meals, scooping the ice cream, and washing the dishes make as little as 50 cents an hour.
The U.S. military has paid Halliburton subsidiary KBR about $12 billion so far for so-called logistics support to U.S. military personnel in Iraq, the largest contract of its kind ever. Around 80,000 troops are served meals at dining facilities every day under the contract -- the other 60,000 or so fend for themselves in field kitchens or by eating military issue "Meals Ready to Eat."
KBR in turn hires that work out entirely to subcontractors whose job it is to recruit, transport, house, feed and pay "third-country" nationals to stock, prepare, serve and clean up at the dining facilities at 43 bases across Iraq.
Those workers are recruited from countries with already low wages, where jobs are scarce. And as pressure to keep the logistics contract cost down has increased, subcontractors have moved from country to country in search of cheaper labor markets.
That is what brought around 770 workers from Sierra Leone, Africa, to Iraq in July to work for ESS Support Services Worldwide, A British-based food service company specializing, according to its Web site, in "remote site, defense and off-shore locations."
upi.com
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:35 AM CST [
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Niger forgeries update
...When the US State Department finally gave international weapons inspectors its “evidence” that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from the African State of Niger in 2003, they held back the one document even their own analysts knew was “funky” and “clearly a forgery”. Experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency quickly discovered that all the papers were fake, but they did this by spotting errors that had slipped passed the State Department and CIA: The fact that the US government handed over the whole bundle of what became known as the “Niger Forgeries” except the one paper they recognised as a hoax suggests they were trying to pass off documents they knew were phoney as the real thing.
theleftcoaster.com
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:30 AM CST [
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America, Israel Bracing for Violence From Syria
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and the Israeli government are preparing for a belligerent Syrian reaction to the findings of a United Nations report that is expected to accuse Damascus of masterminding the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Israeli officials are anticipating an escalation in attacks by the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia on Israel's northern border with Lebanon, Israel's chief of military intelligence, Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash, disclosed during Sunday's Cabinet meeting.
Ze'evi-Farkash told the Israeli Cabinet that Hezbollah's heavy rocket attack last week on Israel's northern communities — more than 300 rockets were launched — was a response to international pressure on Syria and Iran. More pressure on Syria, he said, is likely to result in more attacks.
In Washington, American officials are preparing for an increase in cross-border infiltration of jihadists into Iraq through Syria's porous border, according to Washington insiders who have access to administration officials.
"We too will be paying a price at the Iraq-Syria border," said Edward Walker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs who also served as America's ambassador to Israel and as its deputy chief of mission in Damascus. Walker, now the president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute, said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has struck an increasingly antagonistic and defiant tone in response to Western attempts to isolate him.
forward.comSharon: Military option against Iran
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:27 AM CST [
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Israel may turn fence into border
sraeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni has said that the West Bank separation barrier that Israel is constructing will be a future border with the Palestinians.
The Haaretz newspaper on Thursday quoted Livni as saying at a recent conference that "one does not have to be a genius to see that the fence will have implications for the future border."
"This is not the reason for its establishment, but it could have political implications."
Israel has in the past contended in court that the barrier is only meant to provide security by preventing suicide bombers from entering the country. But Livni's comments reflected a belief that the fences, walls and razor wire have political implications, as the Palestinians contend.
The barrier dips into the West Bank at several points - placing 8 % of the territory on the Israeli side to encompass Jewish settlements. Palestinians say the obstacles are intended as a land grab. They prevent tens of thousands of Palestinians from reaching their jobs, schools and farmland.
aljazeera.netThe on-the-ground reality of Israel's moral bankruptcy in its genocidal policies towards the Palestinians remains as clear as ever
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:21 AM CST [
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Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq
The recent revelations about the virulent spread of death squads ravaging Iraq have only confirmed for many people the lethal incompetence of the Bush Regime, whose brutal bungling appears to have unleashed the demon of sectarian strife in the conquered land. The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn't boil an egg without causing collateral damage."
But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?
Investigative journalist Max Fuller marshals a convincing case for this dread conclusion in a remarkable work of synthesis drawn from information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents. Piling fact on damning fact, he shows that the vast majority of atrocities now attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias are in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets, Global Research reports.
chris-floyd.comCrying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq by Max FullerDemocracy Now: Is the U.S. Training Iraqi Death Squads to Fight the Insurgency?Reuters:Israelis training Kurds in northern Iraq - reportJERUSALEM, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Private Israeli security firms have sent experts to Iraq's northern Kurdish region to give covert training to Kurdish security forces, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.
The daily Yedioth Ahronoth said that over the past year and a half the Israeli companies had set up a secret training base in northern Iraq as part of a multi-million dollar project with the Kurdish regional government.
It said dozens of Israeli specialists had been sent to teach Kurdish forces "weapons training, self-defence and counter-terror warfare".
rootsie on 12.05.05 @ 07:09 AM CST [
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Thursday, December 1st
Incident at Oglala, 30 Years Later: The Long Struggle of Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier, one of America's longest-serving political prisoners, turned sixty-one-years-old on September 12, 2005. Peltier has spent nearly thirty years in federal prison, the result of one of the most infamous political frame-ups in modern U.S. history. He was convicted of killing two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Believing he could not receive a fair trial in the U.S., he fled to Canada. The Canadian government extradited him in 1976, and he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to two life terms in 1977.
Many of today's progressive-minded people will find themselves unfamiliar with the details as well as the significance of the Peltier case. This is a tragedy, given the widespread opposition to the Patriot Act and the heightened fear of political repression by opponents of the Bush administration. The rush of events since 9/11, instead of bringing the Peltier case back into focus, seems to have pushed it further into the margins of political consciousness, where it has unfortunately been for two decades. This is something that needs to be corrected.
counterpunch.org
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 08:38 AM CST [
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Nimmo- Pentagon Black Ops: Abducting Peacemakers in Iraq
...It is possible Norman Kember is a spy, as charged by the Swords of Righteousness brigade in Iraq. However, considering the work of the Christian Peacemaker organization and the fact Kember is 74 years old, it is unlikely he is a spy. Kember and three other Christian peace activists were abducted by the unknown terrorist group and a videotape of them was released yesterday. “Family and friends of Mr. Kember, a grandfather who lives with his wife Pat in Pinner, north-west London, appealed to the kidnappers to release him last night,” reports the Guardian.
“The Rev Alan Betteridge, from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, of which Mr. Kember is a member, said he was a ‘genuine peace activist’… Mr. Kember, who campaigned against the war in Iraq, was seized on Saturday from a mosque he was visiting in a Sunni area of western Baghdad with the three other hostages. It has been reported that they were talking to Muslim clerics about the abuse of Sunni detainees,” more than enough reason for Kember to be abducted by black op “insurgents” who ” just grabbed” the name Swords of Righteousness “out of the air, a tactic which goes back to Beirut,” according to the Guardian. It should be remembered that the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was also kidnapped as she prepared to interview survivors of Fallujah, now admitted to have been attacked with chemical weapons and a napalm derivative.
One look at the CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) in Iraq website and it becomes obvious who abducted Kember and his associates and why. CPT has worked as “an alternative voice to the reporters ‘embedded’ with Coalition forces,” have used “their bodies to protect critical civilian infra-structure such as water treatment facilities, electrical plants, and hospitals,” have documented “abuse of detainees by Coalition forces,” and “have ventured forth in response to urging from Iraqi human rights workers in Karbala.” No doubt all of this Christian activity sincerely upsets the Pentagon and the Bushcons.
kurtnimmo.com
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 07:47 AM CST [
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Noble Lies: When Dick Cheney gave President Bush distorted pre-war intelligence it was more than a simple lie to advance a war, it was the “noble lie” necessary when superiors are inferior.
...Pieces of the puzzle are clearly missing. But a clue to how things ultimately come together emerges from another source: Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. In a recent speech to the New American Foundation, Wilkerson argued that a secretive cabal led by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld made virtually all the decisions about Iraq. Wilkerson maintains that these decisions were “sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less.” Wilkerson seems to be implying that President Bush wasn’t always in the loop about Iraq.
When one pieces this together with another curious fact, that an unusual number of the Neoconservative advisors surrounding Cheney and Rumsefled (Libby and Wolfowitz in particular) were disciples of the philosopher Leo Strauss, one arrives at a startling but tidy conclusion. Strauss, in a nutshell, advocated a view that harkens back to Plato’s Republic, the notion that perceptive and visionary leaders must often tell “noble lies” to their intellectually inferior subjects for their own good. Strauss took Plato’s argument one step farther. He argued that today’s policy elites are frequently intellectually superior to the chief executives they serve and must sometimes deceive their own leaders into making the right decisions.
Wilkerson makes it clear that Bush would have been completely out of his depth had not men like Colin Powell “trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet.” As Wilkerson condescendingly adds, “[Powell] held a youthful and inexperienced president’s hand. He told him everything would be all right because he, the Secretary of State, would fix it.” Powell, however, was not part of the Neoconservative cabal pushing for war. The Powell Doctrine -- only commit to war when you have an overwhelming number of troops to insure total victory -- was anathema to Neoconservatives who wanted to prove in Iraq that a light but high-tech U.S. military could win wars quickly and easily. Powell was the antithesis of the Neoconservative plotters, but he was effectively cut out of the decision to invade Iraq; Bush informed him of the pending invasion only after the decision had been made.
The secretive Neoconservative cabal that operated out of Dick Cheney’s office -- with Lewis Libby at its center -- may have been far less solicitous of their commander-in-chief than Powell was. It is highly probable that they steered Bush towards unreliable intelligence and prevented him from hearing dissenting opinions. Wilson claimed he wrote his NY Times Op-Ed piece debunking the administration’s Iraqi/Uranium claims because he was “outraged” that information the administration -- particularly Cheney’s office -- should have known was false was included in Bush’s speech.
interventionmag.com
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 07:43 AM CST [
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Howard Dean's blunt message: Forget Palestine
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has a fickle stance on virtually every foreign policy issue thrown his way. None, however, are more telling of his party's incompetence than his posture on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, which is virtually identical to that of the neocons.
Recently Dean returned from a week-long jaunt to Israel sponsored by the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). Shortly after his return Dean spoke to an elite crowd of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) friends and lobbyists in Philadelphia about his trip to Israel. And the audience was pleased with what they heard.
"Literally, from Israel's birth, as that great Democrat Harry Truman took the courageous step to immediately extend America's hand to recognize the State of Israel," Dean espoused, "Democrats have done all we can to foster the special, enduring relationship between the two countries. Maintaining Israel's security is a key U.S. national security interest . . ."
But Dean's vision of Israel's security is not without consequences for Palestinians or Arab Israelis.
The October 2003 issue of The Jewish Week quoted Gov. Howard Dean as saying that he had been very clear in his support for "targeted assassinations" of alleged Palestinian terror suspects. He believed these men were "enemy combatants in a war," adding, "Israel has every right to shoot them before they can shoot Israelis."
onlinejournal.com
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 07:36 AM CST [
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At Hussein's Hearings, U.S. May Be on Trial
11/30/05 "Truthdig" -- -- The ongoing trial of Saddam Hussein could prove increasingly uncomfortable for the Bush administration. The first crime of which the deposed dictator is accused, the secret execution of 143 Shiites arrested in 1982, seems an odd choice for the prosecution, and politics may be behind it. Hussein is accused of using poison gas against Iranian troops, of genocide against the Kurds and of massacring tens of thousands to end the 1991 uprising after his defeat in the Gulf War. The problem for the Bush administration with these other, far graver charges, is that the Americans are implicated in them either through acts of commission or omission.
informationclearinghouse.infoFlashback '03: So Saddam Has Been Captured
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 07:27 AM CST [
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The World's Most Dangerous Man: It's George Bush
..."Basically it's always a question of the relationship of forces. If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you are going to become weak yourself. If you behave like a coward then you are going to become cowardly – it's only a question of time. The same happened to the British when they were here… the same happened to the French in Algeria… the same happened to the Americans in Vietnam… the same happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan… the same happened to so many people that I can't even count them."Van Creveld was speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the same principle applies to the Iraqi insurgency in spades, and I want to quote him at length because I have not read a clearer exposition of the strategic dilemma in which we now find ourselves.
"Question: Martin you used the word 'cowardly' yet what we've seen tonight – these commando units, the anti-terrorist squads – these aren't cowardly people.
"Van Creveld: I agree with you. They are very brave people… they are idealists… they want to serve their country and they want to prove themselves. The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel… if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape."antiwar.com
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 07:19 AM CST [
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Analysis: Bush wants to 'Vietnamize' Iraq
...The new National Strategy, therefore, appears a welcome and, indeed necessary sharpening of strategic focus for the United States on what needs to be done in Iraq. But it looks unlikely to achieve its goal of cutting off support for the until-now overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency.
That is because the more the U.S. goal of pushing through the new constitution and establishing a democratically-elected Iraqi government is achieved, the more resentment has grown across the entire Sunni community -- 20 percent of the total Iraqi population -- and the stronger the insurgency has become.
Nor can the new National Strategy guarantee that the ambitious goal of building up the Iraqi army stand on its own two feet will work in the long term.
That strategy was applied 35 years ago in Vietnam when the United States built up the Armed Forces of (South) Vietnam, or ARVN, to be being able to maintain security in the country after U.S. troops were withdrawn and in the short term that strategy, in fact, worked well. But the ARVN could not defend itself or its state from a full-scale military invasion launched with overwhelming force in 1975 by North Vietnam.
Similarly, even if the new Iraqi army serving a predominantly Shiite governing majority proves able to crush the Sunni insurgency, it may prove unwilling or unable to defend itself and its government against an eventual invasion from neighboring fellow-Shiite Iran.
upi.com
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 07:14 AM CST [
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"Riding with the Bad Boys"
"Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?" one official asked Hersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want."
Then he added ominously, "We’re going to be riding with the bad boys."
The authorization for the death squads comes straight from the Oval Office. According to Chris Floyd, "Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into a 'global free-fire zone’’
informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 07:08 AM CST [
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Why School Achievement Isn't Reaching The Poor
Why School Achievement Isn't Reaching The Poor
by Derrick Z. Jackson
We are at the point where any study that shows how low-income schools can reach the heights of academic performance is also an indictment of how the nation has no commitment to lifting all schools.
For instance, the California education think tank EdSource recently published a survey of 5,500 teachers and 257 principals in elementary schools in the state to see what factors correlate the most with high achievement. A median sample school was one in which 78 percent of students participated in free and reduced-price meal programs, 40 percent did not speak English as a first language, and 32 percent had parents who did not graduate from high school. Just 11 percent of students had parents who graduated from college.
The top factors for a higher-achieving school were lofty expectations for all students; clear, measurable goals; a consistent curriculum; and a staff that pores over data to see where teachers and students can improve. Such schools have teachers who are not only willing to push students but come armed with up-to-date textbooks and other modern resources.
The survey made some news for finding that parent involvement, while important, is not as influential a factor in a school as the ones above. Higher-achieving schools have a ''shared culture" that allows them to function in a sense as if there were no parents at all. In a Washington Post story on the survey, a parent said a principal told her: ''We don't have an expectation of the home. We don't blame the home. We can't teach parents. We don't worry about whose responsibility it should be. We just consider it ours."
Such stoicism is admirable. But we keep getting reminders that the nation does not share that principal's sense of responsibility. A classic example is teacher quality. It has long been known that students in low-income schools are less likely to have a teacher qualified to teach a particular subject than students in higher-income schools.
According to the Education Trust, the education reform think tank, 34 percent of classes in high-poverty schools are taught by ''out-of-field" teachers, compared with 19 percent of classes in low-poverty schools. The problem is particularly pronounced in math, where 70 percent of middle school classes in high-poverty and high African-American and Latino schools are taught by a teacher lacking even a college minor in math or a field related to math.
The problem worsened under President Clinton. President Bush has dragged his feet on teacher quality with his chronic underfunding of No Child Left Behind. Under that program, the states are supposed to staff all core classes with qualified teachers.
Defining a ''qualified teacher" is state-by-state roulette where college credentials and state certifications that satisfy No Child Left Behind requirements do not necessarily equate with credibility and connectivity with students. Education and psychology professor Robert Pianta of the University of Virginia, whose research involves observations of nearly 3,000 classrooms, estimates that only 25 percent of the nation's first- through fifth-graders receive high-level instruction in what he calls ''gap-closing classrooms."
The gap in gap-closing teachers is monumental. The Education Trust reported this year that California's largest districts generally spend far less on teachers serving in high-poverty schools and schools with the highest percentages of African-American and Latino students. By the time a student at a high school that is mostly Latin American and Latino graduates, her district will have spent $173,000 less on her teachers than is spent on teachers in schools with few African-American and Latino students.
commondreams.org
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 07:03 AM CST [
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Contractor spends big on key lawmakers
A San Diego businessman under investigation in the bribery case of former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham is a well-known GOP fundraiser whose generosity to key members of Congress came at the same time his company saw large increases in its government contracts, public records show.
Brent Wilkes, the founder of defense contractor ADCS Inc., gave more than $840,000 in contributions to 32 House members or candidates, campaign-finance records show. He flew Republican lawmakers on his private jet and hired lobbyists with close ties to those lawmakers.
Wilkes' charitable foundation, which aids sick children and military families, honored congressmen at black-tie banquets and donated to their favorite causes. Wilkes was also a "Pioneer" for President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, meaning he raised at least $100,000.
With help from two committee chairmen, ADCS got more than $90 million in government contracts since its founding in 1995, helping propel Wilkes from an obscure businessman to a millionaire prominent in Republican circles.
news.yahoo.com
rootsie on 12.01.05 @ 06:58 AM CST [
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